Icon Discussion

My dear saskia139 expressed curiosity today about peoples' icon usage, and requested a bit of discussion and exploration based on her friends icons.

I love LJ icons, but not quite enough to become an icon artist myself. I've made a few simple ones for myself, and lifted the others from icon communities and artists who put their works up to share. I pay for space for 50 icons, and recently brought my gallery up to 49. I've retired a few, but not many.

I think that, for me, the appeal of a large icon collection is the opportunity to play with them almost like dress-up, or costumes. (poliphilo once referred to LJ as a costume ball, and I've always liked that image.) In some respect, my icons are designed to reveal, rather than conceal. On the other hand, I have never used an icon with my own photographic image.

I use my icons to reflect the content of my posts, although sometimes the "reflection" is ironic. For example, I frequently use my icon of Julia Ormond playing Catherine the Great to accompany posts about housework and domestic frustrations. I have a few suites of icons: 4 Princess Leia, 4 Aragorn, several royal women, and at least half a dozen which resonate with various aspects of my spiritual life.

Taken as a whole, they provide an interesting mosaic of my LJ identity.

Saskia requested examples of 10 or so, so here are mine.

( Cut in case you really aren't interested in viewing my etchings )

The full collection can be seen here, if you're interested: http://www.livejournal.com/allpics.bml?user=qos