Digital Painting with Emojis and Yung Jake

How to Explore Appropriation and Pop Culture with Yung Jake’s Emoji.Ink

Pop culture and appropriation go hand by hand, why not incorporate them to understand the bigger picture?  Think about this project as another discovery of your student’s self-identity, including popular culture symbols, influential people or historical icons, music, food, traditions, and objects.   The goal and connection with this exploration is to go beyond the basic understanding of appropriation and navigate how both vocabulary terms play a big role in our everyday experiences.

Introducing Appropriation and Pop Culture

To begin the project, introduce your students to appropriation and pop culture. Appropriation in art is the use of pre-existing images or items with changes or small modifications applied to them.  During the introduction of the vocabulary you can provide visual examples such as cartoon characters that have been appropriated in the past, movie clips or songs are also a great inside to the subject. 

Pop culture is an embodiment of trends within the internet community, most of your students experience it daily if they have a social media presence. Different sources of popular culture include historical and trending news, music, sports, TV programs, foods, films, fashion, celebrities, books, and animation.  It is important that you highlight how popular culture can be connected to one’s self identity and culture and may be different from other’s.  Pop culture is commonly used and mixed in with appropriation; Andy Warhol is one of the greats to accomplishing this mix and a common source for this topic.

 

Connecting Appropriation and PopCulture with Emoji Painting

Artist and Rapper Yung Jake is most popular for his creations of digital emoji paintings of Pop Culture Icons and trending celebrities.  He is the definition of a virtual artist, uses texting for interviews and incorporates technology as well as social media platforms on his interactive rap videos.  As a digital artist, Yung Jake uses the emoji.ink app developed by his partner Vince McKelvie.  Using this app as his tool, Yung Jake creates pointillist portraits composed by hundreds of emojis that specifically fit to the representation of the person he selects to paint.

A portrait of Bob Ross by Yung Jake.  left, with a detail of the piece.

The Teacher’s Guide on How to Use Emoji.Ink

1.       Connect to the Internet and go to the site Emoji.ink

2.      A screen full of emojis will appear, select one.  The screen will turn into a white board, this will be your digital canvas!

3.      To change the size of your emoji, move the toggle in the lower right hand corner.

4.      To change emojis, press the space bar or any key in your computer’s keyboard.

5.      Understand that you cannot save work in the live website, you can only save finished artwork.  To save, click right on your digital painting and select the option.

Project Objective:  Students will learn about digital artist Yung Jake, review Appropriation and Pop culture to be able to create an Emoji.ink digital painting inspired on a  Historical Icon or Pop Culture object, character, person, or celebrity that they identify with.

Mexican Dancer with Traditional Baile Folklorico dress, emoji digital painting by student Selena C.

 

Appropriation and Pop Culture with Yung Jake’s Emoji.Ink Project Steps

1. Planning:  Students will select an appropriate Historical Icon or Pop culture object, character, celebrity, or person.  As a reference, it is recommended that students have an image source for their selection.
2. Thinking:  Students will create a writing reflection to explain their selection.  They must think about how they identify with their selection and why they chose it as well as reflect how that selection is connected to their culture, ideas, or beliefs.
3. Creating: Students can ketch in paper or start using the Emoji.ink app with a basic emoji for the first layer, and as they move on with their painting they can then select specific emojis to include in the digital painting that connect to their selection. 
4. Presenting:  to experience cultural awareness, a good idea is to use the project as a presentation in your classroom.  Students can share their digital emoji creations and discuss the meaning behind their selection.

My Egyptian Culture, emoji digital painting by student Mayven R.

The connection between pop culture and self-identity will continue to motivate your students to create artwork.  Keep in mind that projects involving these topics bring up cultural stories and memories that can be amazing conversations in the process of creating this project.

Have you used appropriation in your classroom?

How do you incorporate pop culture in your lessons?

What digital tools do you use in your classroom?

Ilian Hernandez