Sam Spratt has PAINTED ALL THE MEMES!

Sam Spratt's website describes his work as having "sprattitude". This fine arts graduate combines classical training with current ideas, many of which stem from online media and internet memes. 

PAINT ALL THE MEMES!
Spratt's collection of paintings entitled Illustrated Internet is based on what he calls the visual vernacular of the internet. These paintings are based on popular internet media characters found in rage comics. Most of these characters are used online in their original form; simple black and white sketches of an expressive cartoon face. Spratt has fleshed out these characters by giving them a 3-dimensional existence.

Above: "Paint all the memes!" based on "X all the Y". This character has been used as a template for expressing a fanatical point of view. Notable variations are "Clean all the things!" and "Eat all the brains!" [source]

Above: The rage comics fffuuu face. The painting of the meme character is complete with flying spittle and red eyes. [source]

Above: An expressive painting of the meme Forever Alone. [source]

Paintings of Memes

Although there are thousands of fan art works of internet memes, Spratt's paintings are original in that he has removed the characters from their ordinarily 2-dimensional state and given them a fleshy substance. Although each of the faces still stands alone, bereft of a body, the characters are complete.

Sam Spratt's art style uses a combination of messy brushwork and careful lighting to create the overall effect of a character suspended in endless space.

Above: Trollface in 3D. The troll face rage comics character is used to express delight or humor at someone else's misfortune, and is often used in forums, comics and .gif animations. [source] See more trollface fan art works. 

Above: LOL face. Rumor has it that the original lolface appeared in Garfield Christmas 1987. [source]

Above: Me Gusta. The rage comics character is used to express a sickening enjoyment of disturbing media. [source]

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Internet Meme Graffiti

Internet memes are ideas or media that go viral online, inspiring thousands of fan art works in a short time. There is no way to force something to become a meme or to predict what image, video or social action will become a meme. 

Meme Street Art
Street artists often reflect internet-based ideas through their art, incorporating popular online phenomena into their street murals. Online games, popular videos and internet cartoons are moving from the intangible world of the internet to the physical canvas of the streets. These appear in the form of spray painted and stenciled images or printed stickers.

Above: The Forever Alone meme is based on a rage comic character, and is often used to express loneliness or unhappiness. For a humorous effect one of the words from the phrase "forever alone" is replaced with another word, eg forever a foam. [source]

Above: Me Gusta, a spanish phrase that translates into English as "I like it" is associated with this rage comic face. Online, the Me Gusta face is used to express a perverse pleasure or the enjoyment of something disturbing or anti-social. [source]

Above: This clever vandal has transformed a road sign into a parody of the popular image of an owl with the abbreviation "O rly?" The phrase is often used in online forums as a sarcastic response to a statement that is either blatantly true or implicitly false. [source]

From the Internet to the Street
Many memes have a distinct character that doesn't change all that much, such as Lolcats' image of a cat riding an "invisible bike" and the character from challenge accepted. For other memes, the image changes and can be interpreted in hundreds of different ways, as with Nyan Cat and the Anonymous hacker group character.

Above: Lolcats famous Invisible Bike image has been recreated as an enormous graffiti mural, complete with, um, exhaust fumes. [source]

Above: Challenge Accepted graffiti. This character is often depicted facing near impossible situations, and has become an online symbol for determination and stubbornness. [source]

Above: Anonymous, Nyan Cat and Lulzsec get together to become the main subjects for this meme graffiti art work. Two hacker groups and a rainbow-farting pop tart cat. Not even Salvador Dali could have imagined such a painting. [source]

Above: Trollface, a linear drawing of a grinning face; presumably the face a person makes while trolling the internet. The trollface meme appears in videos, gifs moments after a person has been caught out, and on forums when someone reacts to a troll. [source]

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