The Smiley Face Project

A Two-Year Drawing Experiment (2024–2025)

The Smiley Face Project was a long-form experiment in repetition, constraint and accumulation.

The premise was simple: create one drawing per day under a fixed rule set, remove mood and audience feedback from the decision-making and allow the work to stack uninterrupted over a long enough period to observe change.

The project ran for two full seasons.
Season One: 365 drawings.
Season Two: 365 drawings.
Total output: 730 pages.

No revisions. No batching. No optimization for platforms. Each page was completed on the day it was assigned. The constraint remained unchanged throughout the experiment.

Over time, the drawings became less about individual images and more about the system that produced them. Patterns emerged. Weak ideas burned off. The operator adapted. What remained was a record of sustained practice rather than isolated outcomes.

The Smiley Face Project now exists as a completed archive. It includes the full drawing sequence, written reflections created alongside the work, and physical editions produced as artifacts of the experiment. The project is not ongoing.

What follows on this page is the documented ecosystem that resulted from allowing the experiment to run to completion.

Explore the Project

Notes from the Attempt →
A collection of essays written during the project, documenting observations, pressure points, and lessons from sustained repetition.

Social Media Experiments
Two parallel documentation streams with different constraints:
Instagram @doncarlossalinas (personal archive and written notes)
TikTok @doncarlossalinas (video-based process and reflection)

The Online Store →
Physical outcomes of the project, including Smiley Face Project: Season One, available in three editions.

Status

Completed December 2025.

Author

DonCarlos Salinas
thedoncarlos.com