Art & Craft Emoji

The artist palette 🎨 is the one emoji that means art on its own: a wooden palette with blobs of paint and a thumb hole. People put it next to anything creative, from a finished canvas to a new colour scheme for an app, and it is the emoji for an artist's bio, a commission post or an art class. The paintbrush 🖌️ is the act of painting, the framed picture 🖼️ is the finished work hanging on a wall (Apple and Google both draw a small landscape in a gold frame), and the artist 🧑‍🎨 is the painter in a smock, palette in hand. 🫟, the splatter, is the newest of the set: a splash of colour that reads as paint, ink or any spill, added in Unicode 16.0 in 2024, so it still shows as an empty box on phones that have not been updated.

For drawing and sketching there is a whole desk of tools. ✏️ the pencil is drawing, editing and homework; 🖍️ the crayon is colouring, children's art and anything deliberately rough; 🖊️ the pen is a ballpoint for notes and signatures; 🖋️ the fountain pen and ✒️ the black nib lean toward calligraphy, lettering and writing as a craft; ✍️ the writing hand shows the hand at work; 🪶 the feather stands in for a quill; and 📝 the memo is a pencil on paper, the sketch or the note. The pencil ✏️, nib ✒️ and scissors ✂️ are the oldest characters here, encoded in Unicode 1.1 in 1993 from the Zapf Dingbats font; the palette 🎨 and masks 🎭 followed with the first big emoji set in Unicode 6.0 (2010), and the paintbrush, crayon, pens and framed picture came from Windows symbol fonts in Unicode 7.0 (2014).

Paint colours: the coloured circles and squares

Emoji has no paint tubes, but it has swatches. The coloured circles 🔴 🟠 🟡 🟢 🔵 🟣 🟤 ⚫ ⚪ and the squares 🟥 🟧 🟨 🟩 🟦 🟪 🟫 ⬛ ⬜ work as a palette in text: line them up in rainbow order to show a colour scheme, mark a mood board, label yarn or paint colours in a pattern, or tell a client which shade you mean. A single circle before a word, as in 🟢 sage or 🔴 crimson, is the simplest colour tag there is.

Red 🔴 and blue 🔵 circles have been around since Unicode 6.0 (2010), and the black and white ones ⚫ ⚪ are older text symbols that were promoted to emoji; the orange, yellow, green, purple and brown circles and all the coloured squares except black and white arrived together in Unicode 12.0 (2019), which is why older devices can show a row with gaps in it. 🌈 the rainbow stands for the whole spectrum and for colourful work in general, and ✨ sparkles is the glitter, the shine and the finishing touch.

Sewing, knitting and crochet emoji

The textile corner has its own small set. 🧵 the thread is a spool, 🪡 the sewing needle is threaded and ready, 🧶 the yarn is a ball of wool (there is no crochet hook or knitting needle emoji, so 🧶 covers knitting and crochet both), and 🪢 the knot is a tied loop of rope that doubles as macramé and as the knot people tie when they marry. Around them sit the makers' tools: ✂️ scissors, 🧷 the safety pin, 📏 the straight ruler and 📐 the triangular ruler for measuring and drafting, 🎀 the ribbon for bows and trim, and 📿 beads on a string for beadwork and jewellery.

Thread 🧵 and yarn 🧶 came in Unicode 11.0 (2018) together with the safety pin; the needle 🪡 and knot 🪢 were added in Unicode 13.0 (2020). Outside sewing, 🧵 has a second life on X (Twitter) and Threads, where a spool at the start of a post means a thread of several posts follows, which is why you see 🧵👇 so often. In a craft post it still means what it looks like: a sewing project, a repair or a quilt in progress.

Craft emoji: paper, clay, wood and dolls

Paper crafts borrow from the office drawer: 📎 the paperclip, 🖇️ linked paperclips and 📌 the pushpin for pinning a sketch to the wall, with 🪁 the kite, 🏮 the red paper lantern and 🪭 the folding hand fan as the things made of paper. 🪅 the piñata is a papier-mâché craft, 🪆 the nesting dolls are hand-painted wood (the Russian matryoshka), and 🎎 the Japanese dolls are the emperor and empress of the Hinamatsuri display, set out for the Doll Festival on 3 March. Clay and wood are here too: 🏺 the amphora is pottery, 🪵 the wood is a log for carving or woodturning, 🪚 the carpentry saw is the woodworker's tool, and 💎 the gem stone stands for jewellery making and resin work.

Most of this group is recent: the kite arrived in Unicode 12.0 (2019); the piñata, nesting dolls, wood and saw in 13.0 (2020); the folding fan in 15.0 (2022). The amphora 🏺 (2015) is the oldest ceramics emoji, and the moai 🗿 (2010) is the one real sculpture in emoji, a carved stone head that people use for a deadpan face just as often as for actual statues.

Gallery, stage and the text symbols

For showing the work there is 🖼️ the framed picture and 🏛️ the classical building, which stands for a museum or gallery as well as a courthouse (art gallery and art museum combos are among the most searched for). 🗿 the moai is sculpture. The performing arts have 🎭 the performing arts masks, the comedy and tragedy masks of ancient Greek theatre, for drama, acting and anything theatrical; 🎪 the circus tent; 🩰 ballet shoes and 🧑‍🩰 the ballet dancer; and 🪩 the mirror ball for a show or a dance night.

The last group is plain text, not emoji: the pencils ✎ ✐ 🖉, the white nib ✑, the writing hand 🖎, the four scissors ✀ ✁ ✃ ✄, the pushpin 🖈 and the quilt-square ornaments 🙨 🙩 🙪 🙫. They take the colour and weight of the text around them, so they suit a username, a bio or a heading where a bright emoji would be too loud; a line like ✂ - - - - - - - is the classic cut-here mark. The Dingbats characters ✎ ✐ ✑ ✀ ✁ ✃ ✄ have been in Unicode since 1993 and show almost everywhere, while 🖉 🖎 🖈 and the quilt squares came from Wingdings and Webdings in Unicode 7.0 (2014) and need a font that has them.