Introduction

Explain to the students that over this unit of work we are going to explore a number of different styles and techniques of art, and how we can recreate the styles, or create work that is inspired by them using digital editing techniques. 

We’re going to start things by taking a look at pop art, What is pop art? Does anyone already know anything about it or any artists that were famous for pop art? Pop art means popular art and is art based on modern popular culture and the mass media. The movement emerged in the 1950’s and then flourished in the 60’s and 70’s. 

We’re going to start by looking at the work of Andy Warhol. 

 

 

“Andy Warhol (born Andrew Warhola 6 August 1928 – 22 February 1987) was part of the pop art movement. He was famous for exploring popular culture in his work, using brands like Coca Cola and Campbell's Soup (which was one of his favourite things to eat).”

Reference: https://www.tate.org.uk/kids/explore/who-is/who-andy-warhol

 

You can find out more about him and pop art with this excellent short video from the Tate gallery’s Kids section. It’s a great introduction to the themes, styles and concepts behind pop art and some of the most famous artists in this scene, other than Warhol.

 

You can also find it on Youtube here. 

 

Main task

Some of Warhol’s most famous pieces of work were created around celebrity culture. This example featured Marilyn Monroe, the famous actress and model from the 1950’s. He loved working with bright colours and used screen printing to be able to layer up the colours and produce lots of copies of things. 

 

 

 

We’re going to try and recreate this piece of art using quite different, modern, digital techniques. 

Photo editing software such as Photoshop have made absolutely anything with images possible these days. Photos can be manipulated and transformed to become something subtly different or totally new. Almost every magazine cover or advert you see anywhere will have had some editing work done to it. 

This isn’t always a good thing, and has been highlighted by many as having a negative effect on things like body image, as people’s perception of what is ‘beautiful’ has become warped. 

Many aspire to look like images of famous people that have been heavily edited to make them look thinner, taller, more muscular or without blemishes on their skin, which then makes the image an impossible goal and leave people feeling low when they inevitably don’t end up looking that way. 

But it’s not all bad! You can also do some really cool and fun things with photo editing. Photoshop itself is a really expensive piece of software, so thankfully there are lots of free and more affordable alternatives that do just fine for what we need to do.

 

Pixlr

Today we’re going to be using the website Pixlr, which is free to use. Open the website and click on the Pixlr E version.  

 

 

Create a new image and in the width and height settings, set the size as 300 x 300 so we create a square image. 

 

 

At this point the students need to choose a celebrity that they like and find a good close up headshot image of them. In a new tab in their browser they should search for and save an appropriate photo for their project (open it > right-click > Save image as)

Back in Pixlr, go to Layer > Add image as layer and browse for the image you’ve just saved. 

 

 

Resize the image to so that the head and shoulders fits in, and fills the 300 x 300 size image we created. Don't worry if that leaves some of the original image not showing. 

 

 

Next select the Lasso Select tool and then choose the Polygon option tool above it (unless you have a very steady hand and can use the regular lasso). This lets you select part of an image by drawing round it. The Polygon lasso lets you draw around it by clicking points which join up with straight lines, like a dot to dot.

 

 

Use the tool to carefully go around the head and shoulders of the person in your image. If using the polygonal lasso make lots of small clicks to create smooth curved corners that don’t cut off parts of the image and leave a sharp jagged edge to the selection. 

The feathering tool can also help smooth out jagged edges a bit. Setting it to 2/3 is usually sufficient. 

 

 

Click right around the image until you are back where you started and finish with a double click of the mouse. When you have joined up the selected area it will have a black and white dotted line around it like the image below. If you do too many clicks and lose the selection, go to Edit > Undo (or Ctrl+Z) to get it back. 

 

 

Then go to the Select menu and select Invert selection (Ctrl +I). Rather than selecting the area we’ve just clicked around, this reverses things and selects everything in the image apart from the area we clicked around.

 

 

Once you’ve done this press the delete or backspace key on your keyboard to delete the background of the image. 

 

 

Then go back to the Select menu and choose Deselect (Ctrl+D) to remove all the dotted selection lines from the image. 

 

Then select the empty background layer.

 

 

Choose a colour for the background by clicking the upper of the two circles at the bottom of the tools (shown red here) which brings up the colour selector. Pick a colour from the slider on the right first and then move the dot in the large square to select a precise shade, then press OK.

 

 

 

Choose the fill tool and click on the background part of the image to colour it.

 

Then go to the Layer menu and choose Flatten image. This will stick the two layers of this image together to become one.

 

 

Then go to File > New Image and set the dimensions of the new image to 900 x 900.

 

 

 

On your celebrity image go to Select > Select all (Ctrl+A) and then copy the image from the Edit > Copy (Ctrl+C). Then select the tab with the new empty 900 x 900 image on it and paste the image onto that: Edit > Paste (Ctrl+V).

 

 

Use the arrange tool to move it into the top left-hand corner.

 

 

 

 

To make our image look a bit more like the Marilyn Monroe original we can add some extra colour as eyeshadow etc (this is optional and students might not want to for some celebrities, but they could instead add some colour to the hair or facial hair if appropriate)

 

 

Use the paintbrush tool, choose a size from the top of the screen (10 here) but most importantly, set the opacity to around 15. This will stop the colour we add being a solid colour and masking the image behind it, creating a better effect.

 

 

Zoom in to the image to make this easier. You can control the zoom by using the - , + or  the slider in the Navigate box.

Zoom back out so you can see the whole page again before this next step. 

In the Layers toolbox on the right of the screen, select the layer with your celebrity image on it, 'image.png' in this example. Duplicate the layer from button at the bottom of the layers box menu that appears. This will create Layer 3 copy.

 

 

 

Explain briefly to the students that working with layers like this is very common in photo editing. It’s like having sheets of glass with different things on them stacked on top of each other. If you looked down from above you wouldn’t see the sheets of glass, just the things on them, but each layer could be changed without affecting the others. In photo editing, layers lets us isolate parts of the image, build it up like a collage and apply effects to the separate parts more easily. 

Use the arrange tool again to drag the second version of the image that we have now created to the right of the original, like this.

 

 

Repeat these steps again; duplicate the copied layer and drag the new version of the image to the right so there are three copies of it.

 

 

Once we have three copies of the image, select the original layer and go to the Adjustment menu and choose Hue and Saturation (Ctrl+U). This will give you three sliders to experiment with. 

Hue is the colour, moving this will change all the colours of your image. Saturation is how much colour is in the image; to the left removes colour (all the way to the left makes it black and white), to the right adds colour and makes it more vivid. Lightness is the brightness and is not really needed for this.

 

 

This is the kind of effect that is achieved by changing the hue and saturation. 

 

 

Select the next layer and repeat this process, and then do it again for the third layer so each image is a different range of colours. 

 

 

At this point go to the Layer menu and choose Flatten image. This sticks all the layers we’ve created so far together as one layer.

 

 

When you are back to one Background layer, duplicate it like we did earlier. Use the arrange tool to drag down the second row of three images, and then repeat this again so you have nine images of your celebrity. 

 

 

Leave the Background layer, but on the two new copied layers return to Adjustments and Hue and Saturation and adjust their colours again so all nine are mixed up colours.

 

 

Flatten your image again by going to the Layers menu > Flatten image.

Finally save your image to your computer. Click on File > Save.

Choose PNG and give the file a new appropriate name before clicking Save as. 

 

 

This will then give you a normal save window where you can browse to the location you wish to save your work.

 

Plenary 

And here’s our finished, Andy Warhol inspired pop art! Compare it to the original.

 

 

 

Ask the class:

• What do you think?
• What did we do that matched the original style?
• Could you have improved anything?
• What was the hardest part? Why?
• How could you apply these skills to other projects?