Hello Art Nerds, welcome back to another famous artist video. Today,
I will be drawing Roy Lichtenstein in a cute, cartoon / anime style while teaching
you some fun facts you may or may not know. Roy Lichtenstein, an American pop artist,
was born on October 27, 1923 He was best known for his use of
bright colours that imitated the 4 colours of printer inks, line, movement, emphasis,
and the Ben-day dot method in his artworks which really created a name for him in Pop art.
As a child, his mother Beatrice Lichtenstein exposed Roy to museums,
concerts and other aspects of New York culture which really inspired him to show his artistic
and musical ability during his teenage years. In the summer of 1940, he studied painting and
drawing at the Art Students League of New York with Reginald Marsh.
In the fall, he entered Ohio State University and met Hoyt L. Sherman,
a teacher whose perception-based approach to art shaped his own stylistic approach.
He was also deeply influenced by Caumier and Picasso in his early years.
In 1945, Lichtenstein went back to OSU (Ohio State University) to complete his BFA and was
later invited to become an instructor. He also later assisted in teaching at New York
State University and taught at Douglass College. In June 1949, he married Isabel Wilson Sarisky,
who worked in a cooperative art gallery in Cleveland, where he previously exhibited his work.
In the autumn of 1951, Roy and Isabel moved to Cleveland and as her career prospered, he did
not continue to teach. Instead he had a series of part-time jobs, including industrial draftsman,
furniture designer, window dresser, and creating 3D digital models of dials for an electrical
instrument company. Because of these experiences, he introduced quirky motors, valves, and other
mechanical elements into his paintings and prints. Lichtenstein originally worked in Cubism and
Abstract Expressionism. However, his young son drove him towards pop art because he challenged
him to create a Mickey Mouse piece that was better than the comic book. His painting
Look Mickey is regarded as the bridge between his abstract expressionism and pop art works.
At first, his work was heavily criticized by art critics and he was called a copycat.
In particular, the Life magazine went as far as to publish an article whose title
asked “Is He the Worst Artist in the U.S.?” His most celebrated pop paintings of the 1960s
gravitated toward what he would characterize as the “worst” visual item he could find and
then went on to alter or improve it. Roy began to work with graphic and
linguistic conventions of comic strips to develop his own style of comic strips
where he would use words to express sound effects. He developed a detached, mass-produced effect by
outlining areas that simulated Ben-day screening. Ben-day is a system devised to increase the tonal
range in commercial printing through a dot screen method. He used stencils to bring out the Den-Day
dot effect because he sought to bring the look and feel of commercial printing processes to his work.
Lichtenstein achieved this through the use of primary colours, thick outlines, and Ben-day dots,
creating this machine-made look to his work. After the 1960s, Lichtenstein started to include
still life's and landscapes, which were a dramatic departure from his earlier style.
In total, he created more than 5000 paintings. Roy Lichtenstein died on September 29, 1997.
He played a critical role in the American Pop Art movement by changing the skeptical
view of commercial styles and subjects. It is his reimagining of popular culture through the lens
of traditional art history that has remained a considerable influence to later generations.
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