By Sal Scheibe
This article originally appeared in ArtTrader Magazine, Summer 2011 Issue 15
Smilie faces were a big thing back in the 1970s and they’ve been around brightening up our days intermittently since then. Smilie faces make people feel happy, so bringing together art and smiles is always a good thing. And 10 minute art is also a good thing. Plenty of us have very busy lives with jobs, school, kids, activities, etc. Making time for art can sometimes be pretty challenging. So let’s bring the smiles to our quick art activity and see what sort of fun ensues!
Materials List
- ATC blanks (2.5” x 3.5”)
- Pencil
- Black Inking Pens
- Colored Markers
- Gel Pens
- White Pen (I use Uniball Signo UM-153)
- 10 Minutes
- You could also use watercolors for this project with gel pens on top. They dry quickly!
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| Step 1 Use simple shapes to draw out your figure. You don’t need to do the feet and legs. Your smilie face can be a simple circle with triangle for hat. | Step 2 Use your inking pen to outline your shapes and then erase your pencil lines. | Step 3 Color in your shapes with your colored markers or with watercolors. You could use colored pencils of course but then the project might take you longer than 10 minutes! |
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| Step 4 User darker tones of your main colors to shade your smilie face. I usually assume my lighting source to be the top right and shade toward the bottom left. | Step 5 Add some stripes or other designs to your hat and legs. Draw in your smilie face with the black ink pen. | Step 6 Use your white gel pen to color in the eye area. An alternative would be to leave this area without color when you first apply color. Use a thicker black ink pen to make a larger outer line to help your image stand out. Use a large marker to create a border around your smilie. |
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| Step 7 Use gel pens to highlight – with a line around the border plus a white highlight line around the character. Add some black pupils. | Step 8 Add final touches such as background flourishes and any other ink lines that may help things pop. I used the black micron to help the leg and hat lines stand out. |
Here are a couple of other little smilie people who took about 10 minutes each. I timed them just to be sure – the pink lady took 11 minutes and the green fellow with square hat took 9 minutes. Part of the trick to keeping your time down is to have your materials at the ready. I found things went very quickly when I pre-planned colors.
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Of course, you can take much longer than 10 minutes if you have the time and inclination. The 3 images below all took about 20 minutes each and have a bit more detail and expression than my 10 minute versions. Just have fun with it and see what you come up with!
 Sour and dark |
 My smile is awesome |
 I took 20 minutes! |
I’ve included a PDF link to a 9 ATC printout with the shapes already made. All you need to do is print it on some cardstock and get coloring or painting. Your PDF print setting should be set to “page scaling = none” though this may be different on each computer. We can’t provide printing help beyond that!
ArtTraderIssue15_Smilies10minATCs.pdf
Note for SWAP HOSTS: If you want to use the template and article instructions to host a swap, go ahead! No need to ask. You are welcome to distribute the PDF template to your swap participants. Just credit ArtTrader Mag.
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