For this piece, I decided to recreate/ make my own version of Roy Lichtenstein’s “Sunrise”. I chose this painting after studying his work and life over the 3rd quarter, at first I wanted to recreate a more iconic piece like “Drowning Girl” but I wanted to try something that I could make a little more my own. When looking at the painting compared to the original you will see that the colors are not the same, and I used two different sunrise paintings by Lichtenstein to create mine. At the bottom, there is something that resembles mountains or hills painted pink, and the clouds are right above it in white. The focal point of the painting, the sunrise, rests above the clouds making it look like a sunrise. The center of the sun is a light purple while its rays are a bright yellow against a blue background/ sky. Finally, at the top there is a white line as well as a pink like, I’m not sure what they act as, that was just apart of the original. With this painting I wasn’t really trying to convey much, more of show my knowledge of Lichtenstein’s work and try to create work like his. Before this, I had seen his work and admired it but I enjoyed creating something that was purely based off of his work.https://www.christies.com/lotfinder/Lot/roy-lichtenstein-1923-1997-sunrise-5846083-details.aspx
To create this piece, I first sketched out the original painting with a few changes, then planned out my colors. Next, I began to paint, starting with the pink, then onto the blue, after those two I painted the yellow rays and the center of the circle purple. Next, I used white paint for the clouds. To figure out where to put my lines in the hills I ended up painting dark blue lines, but it was not as clean as I had wanted it to be so I covered it with more pink paint. After all of that, the basics of the painting was done and it was time for the line art. To do this I used a fine point pen and simply just lined the outsides of every part including the sun rays, the clouds, and the hills. Afterward, I drew the lines that were in the hills. To finish and make it more like Lichtenstein’s signature style I was going to put dots in all of the blue portions but I felt as though I would mess up what I had done if I did, so I only put the small fine dots all around the clouds in sections that were similar to the work I was recreating. There wasn’t much to this painting, the most struggle I had was not sectioning off while I was painting to have clean lines, I ended up free handing the entire thing, and although it doesn’t look bad, I feel like it could look better.
There wasn’t much technique that I used while creating this, mostly just painting straight lines, or curving them to create more texture in places it felt needed. The staple of Lichtenstein’s work was his dots, now I didn’t really do as many as I had planned but I still feel like I had enough to make it resemble his work to anyone who may recognize it. I tried to create the dots as best as I can but I wasn’t fully satisfied with them. I’m really proud of this work altogether I really like it. I really enjoyed my color scheme and the flow of the painting. If I could change anything I would use painters tape to have more clean lines.
In conclusion, I would love to make my own rendition of other artists work that I admire. I would do something like this again, it’s really fun and a way to learn new techniques and styles.
