How to design psychedelic pop art

Jimi Hendrix psychedelic pop art

I made this image of one of my favourite guitarists, Jimi Hendrix. He is associated with flamboyant clothing and psychedelic colourful artwork on his album covers and guitars so I tried to make this image as vibrant as possible.

To do this I followed the basic techniques of pop art that I’ve used before. Only this time instead of underlaying the image with flat Warhol-esque colours, I put in various colour gradients on different layers.

This was achieved by getting a new blank layer (clicking on “Create a new layer” icon in the Layers palette, or cmd/ctrl-opt-shift-N) filling it with a gradient of the colour spectrum (select the Gradient Tool (G) and in the Info palette select one of the two spectrums available, to apply the gradient simply drag the Gradient Tool across the image). This can be done repeatedly on different layers. I set the layers’ blending modes so that the colours on all of the layers can be seen and merge together in a complimentary way so that the result is kaleidoscopic. The blending mode I found most useful for this was Difference, but I also used Linear Burn and Soft Light.

I also used three different greyscale layers of the man himself of differing opacities. Multiply, Screen and Pin Light were the layers’ blending modes used here but Multiply is usually the most effective for the black in pop art. One or two of these layers were blurred.

Importantly, this effect can be used to resample a tiny web pic up to a large high resolution print ready image with no loss of quality!

You can download the low resolution PSD here. jimi-hendrix-psychedelic-pop-art.psd 4.6MB

This article was posted on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 10:04 am and is filed under Photoshop.
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26 Responses to “How to design psychedelic pop art”

Jenna, on April 18th, 2008 at 4:48 pm, said:

Nice image! Very cool — Thanks for sharing!
Rob Cubbon, on April 20th, 2008 at 12:51 pm, said:

Thank you, Jenna!
Jeremy, on April 28th, 2008 at 1:23 am, said:

I love the picture – I just made it my desktop background ( I hope that’s cool with you). Amazing…..
Rob Cubbon, on April 28th, 2008 at 10:20 am, said:

Of course I don’t mind, Jeremy. Glad it’s of use to you!
Anthony, on May 4th, 2008 at 6:03 am, said:

Thats a really cool image and its a good technique to add to ones repertoire.
Rob Cubbon, on May 5th, 2008 at 12:44 pm, said:

Thanks, Anthony, you can never have too many techniques!
TripTheLady, on May 20th, 2008 at 3:54 pm, said:

I love what you did with this image! I think you captured the color and feel of the 60′s.
Rob Cubbon, on May 23rd, 2008 at 4:24 pm, said:

Thank you, TripTheLady, I was born in the 60′s and I’ve always been a bit of a hippy!
jennifer, on July 10th, 2008 at 5:56 pm, said:

oh this picture is greaty i love jimi hendrix and jim morrison♥ i want a poster of this
Rob Cubbon, on July 11th, 2008 at 2:22 am, said:

Glad you like it, Jennifer.
Anonymous, on August 28th, 2008 at 3:11 am, said:

it’s so cool really i like it
corey, on October 16th, 2008 at 9:32 am, said:

hey what graphics design program do you use also congrats on the awesome pic very nice
Rob Cubbon, on October 25th, 2008 at 6:43 pm, said:

Glad you like it, anonymous.

This is done in Photoshop, corey.
staci, on December 4th, 2008 at 12:55 pm, said:

I think your art work is great and i love that it draws you in at jimmy keep it going
staci mcmillan 15
Rob Cubbon, on December 5th, 2008 at 4:24 pm, said:

Thank you, Staci!
beth, on January 8th, 2009 at 1:23 pm, said:

its not that great
kelly, on February 5th, 2009 at 8:43 pm, said:

crazy.
gustavo, on February 12th, 2009 at 4:27 pm, said:

qe pedo pz de huevos zta
pinshe imagen zta ashi bn chingona
como ya te abras dado
cuenta no ablo ingles
pero pz zoi mexicano
jejejeje qe pendejada lo se we
pero pz de huevos como lo
dije tu imagen se be bn verga
pz va kamara………
buena bibra kozmika
y mucha p.l.u.r.
jejeje
i love psycho!!!!!!
wakely, on February 27th, 2009 at 2:39 am, said:

haha i set it as my desktop background too. love it!
Rob Cubbon, on February 27th, 2009 at 12:18 pm, said:

beth, kelly, gustavo and wakely, thank you for your comments – I think it would look good as a desktop background for a few weeks, good idea!
katie, on March 5th, 2009 at 10:19 am, said:

i really like it im going to use it for my inspiration in my g.c.s.e art!
Rob Cubbon, on March 30th, 2009 at 5:54 pm, said:

Good luck, katie, with you GCSEs and I hope you’re enjoying art – and I’m glad this is inspirational to you.
matthias, on September 9th, 2009 at 10:09 pm, said:

way beyond cooooooooooool!
Could you make me one for my girlfiend?
Can I send you a picture of her, or something?
please, please answer me
Rob Cubbon, on September 12th, 2009 at 1:04 pm, said:

Prices start at 150$US, Matthias
Mike, on April 26th, 2010 at 5:51 am, said:

Love Hendrix and the trippiness haha
Ali, on June 1st, 2010 at 10:24 pm, said:

good love you thanks

Graphic and Web Designer London UK