Op, Pop and Psychedelic art.

1. Op Art.

Op Art, short for Optical Art is a style of art that uses optical illusions. The work is abstract, commonly monochrome and typically gives the audience the impression of movement, swelling or warping, flashing or vibrating patterns or hidden images.

For this page I chose to look at Op art as it was a very popular style in the 1960s. For these pages I drew curved lines in different directions, building up stripes as I went along. for the other page I drew two overlapping squares and then lines through them to give this effect. As Op art is monochrome I used black and white gauche paint to paint each stripe to give the effect of an optical illusion. I like this page as I feel it clearly shows the Op art movement very well. I would not change anything about this page, only to maybe add some photos of other artist work on Op art. 

2. Pop Art

Pop Art peaked in the 1960s after emerging in both Britain and America in the 1950s. It began as a revolt against the dominant approaches to art and culture and traditional views on what art should be. Young artists felt that what they were taught at art school and what they saw in museums did not have anything to do with their lives or the things they saw around them every day, therefore, they turned to sources such as Hollywood movies, advertising, product packaging, pop music and comic books for their imagery.

By the beginning of the 1960s, pop art was an experimental form that several artists were independently adopting; some of these pioneers, such as Roy Lichtenstein, would later become synonymous with the movement. Warhol, who would become famous as the "Pope of Pop", turned to this new style, his early paintings show images taken from cartoons and advertisements, hand-painted with paint drips. Marilyn Monroe was a pop art painting that Warhol had done and it was very popular.

Looking closely at the two artists mentioned, I began this page by looking through popular pieces of Pop Art. After choosing some of my favourite pieces as well as the some of the most popular, I drew the artwork onto this page. As the Mickey Mouse piece has a multi-coloured background, I used different coloured tissue paper to collage over a section of the page where I had drawn the mouse, using PVA glue to ensure it was firmly stuck down. I then used gauche paints to paint over the whole page. I like this page as I feel it looks creative and colourful and differs away from collaged images as many of my sketchbook pages have, however, looking back at it now I would have liked to have used brighter colours on the background as I feel it makes it look very dull. I would also like to have mixed the paint properly as the background looks streaky instead of flat like gauche paint is meant to.   At the bottom of the page I have also curated a small booklet displaying some photographs of Pop Art. I also like this as I feel it is a more creative way to show artists work instead of collaging it onto a page.

3. Psychedelic Art.

Psychedelic Art is any piece of art or visual display inspired by psychedelic experiences or hallucinations, known to follow the ingestio of LSD or Psilocybin. The word Psychedelic means 'Mind-Manifesting', meaning all artistic effects depict the inner world of the psyche. Psychedelic arts were a counterpart to psychedelic rock music. Concert posters, album covers, liquid light shows, liquid light art, murals, comic books, underground newspapers and more reflected not only the kaleidoscopically swirling colour patterns of LSD hallucinations, but also revolutionary political, social and spiritual sentiments inspired by insights derived from these psychedelic states of consciousness.

As this became a rising trend in the 1960s I began researching more into it. Psychedelic art inspired many artists including fashion design Emilio Pucci, a designer I am very fond of, and therefore I used his influence in my sketchbook. For this page I found a scrap piece of fabric that depicts Pucci and psychedelia very well. I used this as a background for my page, collaging images I found of examples of Psychedelic art on top. I am not a fan of this page as I feel the collage looks very rushed and I don't believe it is at my best standard. While creating this page I feel I lacked inspiration of how to display mine and others work, making this page not look as good as it should. If I could redo it I would maybe draw onto the page and not cover the whole background in fabric.