Roy Lichtenstein - WHAM, POW, BAM!

Roy Lichtenstein is currently on display at Tate Modern, a great exhibition with not only his classic comic art but also other tangents throughout his career. I went to see it a few weeks ago and loved it; the descriptions of how he'd taken comic strips and not only enlarged them but also stripped them of "unnecessary" details helped bring out the brilliance of the paraphrases. The exhibition ends on May 18th, but if you do have time to go I highly recommend it!

The comic art theme, and sound effects in particular, is something I had come across in one of my main sources of inspiration: The Wha Nails Book of Nail Art. I was originally browsing for designs where I could use a red background since I wanted to enter a competition in InStyle when I came across it anew and couldn't help but to make the connection.

When I was doing the left hand, I planned on doing the dots after the bubble/explosions, but realised it probably wasn't a very good idea. I also liked the plain background, even in contrast to the dotted right hand, so rather than starting again I kept it.

My base coat here (on top of my usual Sally Hansen Diamond Strength) is nails inc's It's red, babez that came with an InStyle magazine. Whilst I have multiple red shades already, I knew that my only lighter alternative is reaching its end so it couldn't have arrived more conveniently! The outlines of the explosions were first drawn in white with a toothpick, and then filled with the normal brush. For the black contours and text I took the tip of the nail art "pen" I bought from Topshop (which almost immediately blocked up) and simply used it the same way I would with a toothpick.

Finally, I couldn't resist taking this picture. Yes, the text on the right hand is a bit squiggly, but a thumb which says "BAM" was just too good to resist.