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Pop Art Lesson

Digital Design For Canvas Painting With Cartooning Students

Aug 20, 2007 Jo Murphy

This is a three lesson project that is designed digitally only to be transferred onto a canvas in the style of Roy Lichtenstein from the Pop Art era.

Starting at about age seven, students are at a stage where they absorb explicit drawing instruction well. They are developing an understanding of mathematical concepts and can understand how to use perspective so long as it is patiently modeled frequently.

This exercise takes a simple cartooning lesson and develops it into a Pop Art Project in the style of Roy Lichtenstein

The project will take at last three - one hour lessons.

Materials

Drawing implements and high quality drawing paper

A scanner and a digital projector

Photoshop Elements or other similar software packages

A canvas, paints and brushes

Clean up materials such as buckets, rags etc

Activity One.

Show students how to construct a picture in simple cartoon form explaining how 2 point perspective is employed.
Be sure to clarify and simplify the figures
Once you have simplified the cartoon scan it into Photoshop Elements or another software package
Clean the picture and enlarge it (perhaps tracing it with a black felt pen so that you can have very clear closed outlines)
Colour the picture digitally
Add a speech bubble (this is important in Pop Art based on cartoons and comics)
Add text in Comic Sans (it is important to use Comic Sans Font as you want an old vintage comic effect)
As you look at the sequence of pictures (featured below this article) notice that a lot of the detail from the original drawing has been sheered away
Keep the colour combination very simple
As the picture is refined bleed the outlines so that they become thicker and thicker as well as flatter and flatter
Students might like to have a print out of their pictures at this stage for their Visual Diaries

Activity Two

In this lesson

Project the cartoon onto a stretched canvas
Trace around the black outlines
Using black paint that has good viscosity and high quality brushes that will hold a sharp tip outline the work
Once this is dry fill in the shapes with light tints or pastel paint
After this has dried use a pointillist technique to dot over the spaces with pure colours. (for example use pure green hue over the pastel green)
This will give the painting the effect of looking like old fashioned comic print

Activity Three

Finish off all aspects of the painting.
Once the painting is complete paint the speech bubble over the painting in the appropriate place in white or a very light pastel (unless you want to go for black with white writing.)
Add the text ensuring that the students copy the correct font style as accurately as they can
When the painting has been completed spray with a varnish to add polish and pizzazz

The project will link present day technology with commentary about printing process from the Pop Era. This will afford teachers the opportunity to bring a little history of art and artistic process into focus for the children. Here are some suggestions about how you might like to use this lesson.

The copyright of the article Pop Art Lesson in Arts Education is owned by Jo Murphy. Permission to republish Pop Art Lesson in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.