Make an Andy Warhol-style Pop Art portrait

In this tutorial we show you how to use the Halftone filter to create an Andy Warhol-style portrait effect in a handful of simple steps.

The American artist Andy Warhol was part of the Pop Art movement which shook up the art world in the 1960s. His iconic images of everything from Marilyn Monroe to Campbell’s Soup cans are easily recognisable even to this day.

For this project we will recreate one of the styles popularised by Warhol – a halftone coloured image effect. We’ll start by applying a Halftone filter to the image to convert it to a series of black dots on a white background.

We’ll then add a series of layers to the image and use them to paint the image with some simple colours. We’ll finish with a curves adjustment to boost the image contrast.

01 OPEN YOUR IMAGE
Open your portrait start image. Crop it to a square shape using the Crop tool. Choose Window>Layers if the Layers Panel is not visible. Right-click the Background layer and choose Duplicate Layer. Click OK.

02 SMART FILTERS
Choose Filter>Convert for Smart Filters. Click OK. Press D to reset the foreground and background colours. Choose Filter>Filter Gallery. Open the Sketch filters and click on Halftone Pattern. Set Size to 9, Contrast to 50, Pattern Type to Dot. Click OK.

03 PAINT THE IMAGE
Click the Add New Layer icon at the foot of the Layers Panel. Set the Blend Mode to Linear Burn. Choose a round soft brush, set the foreground colour to #F9D7E6 and paint in the skin. Repeat the process and add new layers for each colour paint. We used #F95963 for the lips, #54EEE3 for the eyelids, #FCEB32 for the hair and #77F6FB for the background.

04 FINE-TUNE THE IMAGE
If desired, lessen the intensity of a colour layer by reducing that layer’s Opacity. Click the Background copy layer, choose Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Curves. Click OK. Drag a sharp upwards bend in the curve to add some contrast to the image.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 22nd, 2013 at 11:11 am and is filed under Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a comment. Pinging is currently not allowed.