How to Create Pop Art

Pop art is a style of art that has captured the imagination of art lovers since the 1950s era and has gone from strength to strength in lots of different formats and designs ever since. From early pioneers of pop art such as Andy Warhol, Eduardo Paolozzi and Jasper Johns through to modern renowed creators of pop art styles such as Aya Takano, it seems this very bold, unique art sector has unlimited acclaim generation to generation. Many people have tried and failed to create their own pop art style, perhaps looking to over complicate things a little too much or not having the required inspiration for this style of art, whatever the reason there are some foundations and mechanics behind pop art that will help you learn how to create your own pop art. Pop art is very much about raw attitude and a willingness to take the ordinary things from daily life and culture whilst blending it with with completely unrelated materials.

Taking inspiration from popular culture such as news, comic book heroes and celebrities to name a few and mixing them with a blend of vibrant colours or other unrelated images will give you an idea of how to create a basic pop art piece. Andy Warhol was famous for taking advertising and popular icons of the day and either mixing them with colour and objects at times or creating multiple images of the same face with different finishes applied to each image, examples of this are his work with Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe respectively where he showcased these two famous faces of the day individually across multiple images with the only differences being the blend of colours or tone and pattern in each section. Whatever the inspiration you choose the golden rule when learning how to create pop art is to choose the image of inspiration and perhaps start by making a piece with four to six portraits of the same image all with different colour, texture, tone and pattern. Once you have chosen the image you must then outline the image to get the shape and highlight the different dark and light areas of the image, making a bold or strong outline will help you define your varied tones, patterns and colours later on. The next step of the process is to trace the outlined image and transfering it to your chosen canvas, you might want to start with paper or artists canvas, although it is recommended using paper whilst you learn your skills to save money. After transferring the image and outlines to your chosen canvas, it is time to fill in the basic tones of the image, shading dark areas to emphasise the original basic tones of the image and outline borders.

This step is essential as it will help to choose which colours, tones and patterns to use on your individual portraits. At this early stage as a pop artist we would recommend sticking with four portraits, this way you can complete each section with a different set of presentation, one for colour, one for tone, one four pattern and one for texture. Progressing this way will also help you to see how comfortable you are with different styles as you may find colour or one of the others finishes is your strong point. Once complete you will have the foundation or either a potential masterpiece or a complete mess, however this basic guide on how to create pop art will help to highlight improvement areas and where you are going wrong.