Pop Art Nail Art for Beginners

To achieve this design you will need: A picture of yourself (or whatever you choose to draw), various acrylic paint colours (or just the primary colours), various fine tipped paint brushes (you can cut them to make them finer), a paint tray, nail buffer, high gloss gel top coat, cuticle oil & NO COFFEE! (You cannot be shaky!!) Most phones have a pop art edit. You can also play around with hue & saturation to get some colour combo ideas. You can see in the picture I had a few options to look at and to get an easier idea of where I would be accenting certain features.  

Before you start map out you colour combo plan. Make sure it is easy to follow so you don’t get confused and end up with two blue faces :P Start with clean prepped nails, lightly buffed (natural or enhanced). Start by painting 2-3 coats of acrylic paint on all your fingers. I fine thicker paint is best for this design as it has for coverage. For the last coat I thinned the colours out with water to get it a bit smoother. Remember, it doesn’t have to be 100% smooth because you will be covering most of it up, and the top coat will do its magic. ;)  

On the lightest nail lightly map out a basic plan of face placement. Then roughly plot your face on all nails. Remember that it’s better to go a bit bigger because you will be going over the face later with hair and face details. Try your best to make all the face shapes the same.  

Since I have a chunk of colour in my hair I chose to highlight just that part with a different colour. You can do your whole head of hair a different colour like the famous Marilyn Monroe picture, or you can make your hair the same colour as your face and highlight areas with black. Remember to play around with a photo editor first to see what suites you best!  

This step isn’t necessary, but if you’re new to hand painting then I recommend shadowing in your face features to make sure you know where you will be going with the black later. It also adds a more detailed effect in the end and it’s really not that hard to add some little eye and mouth blobs so why not!  

Next is the scary part! Make sure you are nice and relaxed because black isn’t very fun to make mistakes with! This is where it’s important not to have any coffee jitters ;) I bought a bunch of brushes from the dollar store and just cut the ends to make the tip finer. Carefully go in and fill in your hair details. Once you’re happy with your first one, the rest are a lot easier!  

Remember to always support your pinky finger against somewhere. If you’re doing this design on your own nails you should also use your thumb to support the finger being painted. This just makes it easier to paint exactly where you want to paint. Especially for the smaller, more detailed areas.  

Using your finest brush, now it’s time to go in and highlight your facial features! I used a brush that only had two hairs sticking off the end. Make sure you’re continuously cleaning it. For the mouth i put a small white blob for teeth and then went around it after for the lips. For the eyes, I did the black first and then added a few little white spots.  

Yay!!! Good job! You’re almost done! Wait for your design to dry fully. Use this time to carefully overlook your design to see if there’s anything else you want to touch it. Maybe you need to add some lines to make them match a bit better? Once fully dried, apply two coats of high gloss gel top coat and finish with some cuticle oil. :)  

This is my final design! Remember you can do objects instead of your face, just follow the same idea. This is myself, Andy Warhol style! I hope you enjoyed my first tutorial! Thanks!