Easy Pop Art Portraits

What is Pop Art?

The term Pop-Art was invented by British

curator Lawrence Alloway in 1955, to
describe a new form of "Popular" art - a
movement characterized by the imagery of
consumerism and popular culture.
Pop-Art emerged in both New York and
London during the mid-1950s and became
the dominant avant-garde style until the late
1960s.
Characterized by bold, simple, everyday
imagery, and vibrant block colors, it was
interesting to look at and had a modern "hip"
feel.
The bright color schemes also enabled this
form of avant-garde art to emphasize certain
elements in contemporary culture.
Helped to narrow the divide between the
commercial arts and the fine arts.

For more about Pop Art,

click here

Major Players
Andy Warhol
Made paintings and
silkscreen portraits of
friends and everyday,
mass-produced objects.
Warhols silkscreens were
often off register,
meaning his colors
overlapped resulting in a
more loose painterly look.

Roy Lichtenstein
Created a series of comic
book inspired paintings
and silkscreens.
Lichtenstein often used a
half-tone pattern in his
pieces which he referred
to as Ben-Day dots.
If you have ever looked
closely at a newspaper,
you have seen these
patterns left by printing
presses.

Pop Art Challenge

For this project, I would like you to

create a series of 3 portraits to honor
the Pop Art Movement. More
specifically, the portraiture of Andy
Warhol mixed with a little Roy
Lichtenstein. This is an opportunity to
experiment with colors, filters, and
blending modes to ultimately create a
fun piece worthy of printing.
Specs:
8 x 10 x 3 pieces- One celebrity, one
self portrait, one portrait of someone
you know
300 Ppi
CMYK
ID: Pop1-3_lastnamefi.psd, tiff

Step 1: Create a new document with the

following specs: 8X 10, 300 ppi, CMYK

Step 2: Open a worthy portrait in Photoshop and make the decision to

remove it from its background or leave it as is. Once you have made
your decision, bring your portrait over to the document you just
created. Transform your portrait cmd+ t so that it fits on your new
canvas.

Step 3: Duplicate your portrait layer- Cmd + J and be sure that both portrait
layers are visible. Change the blending mode of your copied portrait layer
from Normal to Color Dodge in your layers panel.

Step 4: You will be working on the portrait copy layer for these next few steps.
Choose Cmd +I to invert your image. It will look strange, but that is OK. Next
go to Filter-> Blur-> Gaussian Blur

Step 5: A dialogue box will open and you will need to use the slider to determine the
amount of pixels to be blurred. I chose 7 px because I could see the features of her
face without much noise. Each photo will be different but I recommend keeping the
number under 15.

Step 6: Next go to Layer->New Adjustment Layer->Threshold. (You can also get here
by choosing your adjustment layers panel). A dialouge box with a histogram will show
up- use your slider bar to find the threshold which lets you see the facial features of
your subject the best . Your image should look like a sketchy black and white drawing
at this point. Change the blending mode of your adjustment layer to MULTIPLY.

Step 7: Now you are ready to add color! You can do this in one of several ways. Make
sure that you create a new layer for each color you add to your portrait. Choose any
color you desire for the foreground, but make sure that your background color is
white. You can use any selection tool you like and use the paintbucket tool to fill your
selection, or you could apply color in a more Warholesque manner with a paintbrush.

Step 8: Looks like weve lost some detail in the face. Luckily, that can be fixed
by once again changing the blending mode on the layers panel to MULTIPLY.
Now you should see all of those features again!

Step 9: At this point you might want to try out a filter which will really help you get
that whole Pop Art feel. Go to Filter->Filter Gallery-> Sketch->Half-tone Pattern. This
filter relies on the foreground and background colors to create a half-tone pattern. Try
different color combination for different effects. I chose dot and played around with
the size of the dot as well as its contrast. The smaller the area being filled, the smaller
the dots.

Here is my result. You will also notice that I missed

several spots so make sure to zoom up while painting.

Continue creating a new layer for each color added. Make sure that the blending
mode of each color layer is on MULTIPLY. Add the half-tone filter if you wish.
Experiment with other filters patterns, and blending modes until you are happy with
the result!

I hope that you enjoy creating your very own Pop Art
Portrait. Contact me with any questions, comments
or concerns!

Inspiration Gallery