All About Painting

How do I make a celebrity pop art portrait?

I want to paint some celebrities on canvas with a pop art influence. I plan to have just one color for the background. What’s the best way to transfer an image onto the canvas? Im not skilled enough for freehand and my stencil didnt work out. Help!

The first thing you need to do is cover the canvas in your background color, because you’ll be putting the outline over that.

Well, the thing about pop art style portraits is they have really high contrast, so I would suggest getting a photo of the face, and photocopying it a few times, increasing the contrast on the copier each time, until you have a pretty much black and white image. This will define your contours. Then enlarge it to the size you want to paint it (you might have to do this in sections, depending on the size of your canvas).

Then, stick the photocopies together, and place them face down on a lightbox if you have access to one, otherwise tape them to the window with image facing away from you. Get a soft lead pencil (I’d recommend 6B or up), and trace the outlines of the shapes that make up the face (these will mostly be the shadows cast by the features rather than the features themselves).

Then position the copies onto your canvas, with your tracing in contact with the canvas and the copy facing you. Then ’shade’ along the lines you traced with your pencil, applying enough pressure to transfer your traced outline onto the canvas.

This should give you a faint outline that you can then follow to paint the dark areas and create the face.

Good luck

Edited to add: Liquin is not a glue, it’s an oil painting medium (I’m an oil painter…) and if you use it as the poster below has suggested, it may well stick the paper down, but it will also make the surface incompatible with acrylic paint or any other water-based medium you wish to use. Unless you’re painting with oils you have no need for Liquin. If you do go with the method suggested below, just use spray adhesive.

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