How to Draw in Retro Revival Style

Retro Revival-Inspired Art

Whether you call it vintage, kitsch or retro--when you see art done in this particular style--it immediately reminds you of the fabulous 1950s aesthetic--with its ideas of the streamlined, idealized future--and now, romanticized past. There is a resurgence of this art style going on in cartoons, advertising and home décor. What follows are a number of ways to achieve this look in your own art--either for imitation or inspiration.

Things You'll Need

• Pencil
• Paper
• Markers or other art supplies

Instructions

1. Start with basic shapes and silhouettes when constructing your forms. Heads can be round, oval or wonky squares to get the point across without all of the bumps and curves of a natural face. Household items, buildings and trees are taken down to an idealized level of interpretation, and are frequently shy of embellishment.

2. Make your lines smooth and strong. Sketchiness was seldom seen in the art of the '50s. Curves were pleasant arcs and even thin lines used for details or atmosphere usually lacked wobbles. A contrasting color would often be used to describe certain details necessary to make a blob of color better resemble its real-like counterpart, but they were frequently kept to a minimum.

3. Exaggerate proportions, curves and angles. In retro art, angular features were emphasized almost to caricature lengths--such as pointy noses and square jaws--and curves were very pronounced. A lot of the time, a neck--when present--would be so spindly it would hardly seem strong enough to hold up the head of the subject.

4. Select a limited color palette, two or three colors per piece. While we have millions of colors at our disposal, keeping your retro art to just a couple of colors makes the figures stand out more and highlights the contrast in your chosen hues, even if they are tone-on-tone.

5. Use outlines sparingly, if at all, and offset them from the fill colors to simulate registration errors. Multipass printing requires precisely lining up the plates or screens so that the colors fit together. Even as late as the '50s, registration errors were common in color printing, and duplicating that effect on purpose will give your art an interesting look, reminiscent of that era.

6. Saturate the colors you do use, making them rich and helping them to stand out against the background or other elements on the page. While there were plenty of watercolorists in that era--the iconic look of the time utilizes heavy swatches of color--use this to your advantage.

7. Make use of iconography common to the era. Space themes and robots were very popular during that time and the fashions of the day are wonderful to work with. With World War II over, but the Cold War just revving up, war themes were still common, the atom bomb and mushroom cloud particularly. But you also had soldiers home from the War, bringing with them the culture of the Pacific Islands, so tiki themes were popular too.

Resources

• Derek Art