How to Paint Roy Lichtenstein’s Girl with Hair Ribbon

Check out the painting I did below of Roy Lichtenstein’s Girl with Hair Ribbon. I toyed with the idea of doing actual Benday Dots on her face by using circular stickers, and then thought an easier way out was just to colour her face nude, like alot of other replicas do, but instead, I used a red sharpie and went nuts on her face.

Check out the other painting I did of Roy Lichtenstein on a 4 x 6 canvas.

About Roy Lichtenstein

American artist Roy Lichtenstein (1923 – 1997) was born in New York City and grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. He was one of most influential artists in the pop art movement. His style largely derived from comic strips, portrayed the trivialization of culture endemic in contemporary American life. Using bright, strident colors and techniques borrowed from the printing industry, he ironically incorporated mass-produced emotions and objects into highly sophisticated references to art history.

“Girl With Hair Ribbon” is a 1965 pop art painting by Roy Lichtenstein. Within Lichtenstein’s comics period, there was a period where he exclusively painted close-ups of women. In Girl, as with everything from that sub-period, the highly stylized beauty of the woman’s face makes for an overpowering pure femininity in the painting. Even though taken out of context, the image still retains some of the narrative qualities of the comic it was taken from. The woman is looking out towards the viewer, with an expression that hints at longing, pensiveness, or perhaps even fear. We the viewers are left with a tiny fragment of a story.

Reference link here.

Steps to create Roy Lichtenstein’s “Girl with Hair Ribbon”

1. Get a Gallery Style Blank Canvas
Mine was a 24 x 24 inch canvas.

2. Get the Artwork onto the Canvas
If you have access to a projector, get the artwork into a jpg and project it onto the canvas and trace it lightly with a pencil.

3. Start filling in with Colour
Do like colours together, that way you don’t have to keep washing your brushes.

4. Black Outlines
I eventually got bored of the yellow and had to change it up, or I would go nuts.

As mentioned, I used a red sharpie instead of painting red circles.

End Result!

Tip: I say also to invest a little more and purchase a gallery stretched canvas. It really makes a world of difference when hung on your wall. You can wrap the painting over to the sides and gives it more depth and a much nicer look.