Pop Art is an artistic movement that emerged in the 1950s and flourished in the 1960s, fuelled by the popular culture of the time. To this day, pop culture continues to be a source of inspiration many artists and illustrators following in the footsteps of the great Pop Artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, David Hockney and more.

Many artists are attributed to the art movement, from Andy Warhol to Peter Blake, and perhaps unfortunately lesser known Pauline Boty - look her up! They shared a common interest for colour, humour, politics and, of course, fame. Whether they had it themselves or used it in their work, it certainly made for an assault on the art world at the time. 

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Pop Art is created using colours and shapes and quite often, repetition. From collage to printmaking – it can be a really easy style to pick up when creating your own inspired artwork. Perhaps this will help you see that you don’t need to rely on your drawing skills all the time, but have some fun with the tools you find around you. You could make it comical like Roy Lichtenstein, or use collage like Richard Hamilton, or perhaps use your iPad to create like Andy Warhol.

Here, we've demonstrated a couple of ways you can use Pop Art to inspire your own artwork:

Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein is famous for his comic-like paintings, using bright colours, thick lines and dots. Start with a simple line drawing of your subject. You could trace a picture or draw your own.

Then using felt tip pens, colour in, draw dots or add lines to create different textures. You can experiment with different colours and patterns, add the dots closer together or lines further apart. It is totally your choice. Check out our blog on how to draw zentangles for more pattern inspo.

Next, taking inspiration from Andy Warhol's iconic tomato soup prints - and using the current tin can of choice, Baked Beans, you could use a couple of free apps to do this with. We used the app Paintwork to draw the can and add the text, then used the Photo Collage app to duplicate the can to create an image made up of lots of the cans in rows. Of course, you don't have to draw beans! You could choose anything!

Which style of Pop Art is your favourite? Maybe a collage inspired by Richard Hamilton would be more your style? Or something more psychedelic like James Rosenquist?