How to Draw Pop Art
Pop art began in Britain in the mid 1950s, and spread to the USA later that decade. It took its themes from popular culture, such as comic books and advertising, and mass production, using mundane objects.
Probably the most famous pop artist is Andy Warhol, with his iconic pieces depicting Campbel’s soup and Marilyn Monroe.
The style which set out to parody the banal and kitsch within popular culture is often typified by bright colours and bold designs.
When beginning a piece of pop art, it’s important to use an easily identifiable theme, so for this piece I chose the pentangle, or pentagram, which is easily recognisable and is often identified as a Pagan symbol.
As I wanted the colours to be bold and fairly smooth, without obvious brushstrokes, I chose to work in artists acrylic paints. These provide strong pigments, similar to oil paints, but they are water soluble and have a quick drying time, like water colours, so you don’t have to wait days for successive coats of paint to dry.
However, as I wanted to scan the finished piece into the computer so that I could upload it on to Zazzle.com (click here to view more of my art) I chose to work with paper suitable for acrylic paint, rather than canvas; using a medium weight Daler Rowney Acrylic Paper.
I set out to use a repeating Pentagram design, but wanted some variation, so used four different sizes of Pentagram in a random pattern.
I’m sure I could have designed this and done it all on the computer, but call me perverse, I actually get pleasure out of drawing things by hand, and spending two weeks completing the finished piece.
The background needed to be as bright as possible, so I chose a fluorescent red acrylic paint (Daler Rowney 544). Daler Rowney has a really good range of fluorescent colours – there’s a fluorescent green I’m itching to use somewhere!
However, when I repeat the design (see later), I will use a standard bright red, as my scanner just couldn’t cope with the fluorescence, which came out off-white!
The background took several layers of paint, before I was satisfied that the intensity of colour was just right.
I then painted random Pentagrams jet black, and the remaining ones violet. The black required only one coat of paint, but the violet required two in order to obtain the intense colour.
I mentioned earlier that I will be repeating this piece of work. This is because I wish to create some fabric in this design. However, what I forgot when drawing this the first time round is that in order to fill a piece of fabric, the design must be repeated, so the Pentagrams at both edges must be continuations of each other, so that they match when placed side by side, as must the top and bottom. Never mind, I can spend another enjoyable fortnight drawing this piece all over again.
As I was unable to scan the finished work it was photographed and uploaded that way instead.I have plans for several more pop art pieces over the coming weeks, although they may not all have hubs written about them. Click here to read more how to art projects.
This finished item, called Psychedelic Witch was used to create, posters, Keds shoes, bumper stickers, buttons, magnets, mousepads and greetings cards on Zazzle, so one design can go a long way!
Tags: art, oil painting, pentacle, pentagram, pop art, pop artists, psychedelic, witchcraft
art | Georgina_writes | 
February 25, 2010 5:43 am | 
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