I Painted Marilyn Monroe on a Collage of Vintage Ads

If I had a nickel for every time I tried to paint Marilyn Monroe, well…I’d probably have about thirty five cents. And while that may not be not much in terms of money, it is a decent amount of attempts at painting the same person unsuccessfully.

Painting Marilyn Monroe is no easy task…

For some reason I’ve always struggled to capture Marilyn Monroe’s look. You know the one… eyes half open, mouth not quite smiling. So… when I came across a vintage Life Magazine cover that featured Marilyn with her eyes wide open, I knew I had to try painting her again.

As if the stakes weren’t high enough, I decided to create a collage of vintage ads for the background of my painting.

I wanted the collage to reflect the time period of Marilyn Monroe’s career, so my goal was to find vintage ads from the mid 40’s to mid 60s. I was able to accomplish this with a few vintage Life Magazines I purchased on Ebay.

Going through the old Life Magazines was actually pretty fun. Kind of like looking through a time capsule. It was funny to see the wild claims you could make in order to sell a product. I ended up pulling a wide variety of vintage ads for the collage. Anything from appliances to clothing to medications- as long as it captured the vibes to the decades that Marilyn Monroe was working n Hollywood.

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Arranging and attaching the vintage ads to my canvas proved a bit more challenging than I anticipated.

I purposely chose a wood panel canvas for this portrait painting assuming that attaching the ads would be easier to do on wood than on a traditional canvas. I’m still assuming that to be true, but as a first-time collager, I definitely underestimated the time it would take. In the end, attaching the vintage ads to the canvas with mod podge took about twelve hours and a few bubbles and creases definitely slipped through.

So, I don’t know… is that a long time for a rookie collager? 

After the collage foundation was done I decided I wanted the ads to have a flatter sheen, so I gave them a coat of Golden Matte Medium. I did use a flat finish Mod Podge, but it was still a bit glossy for my liking. 

Next up— mixing up the flesh tones with acrylic paint…

For the portrait itself, I knew I wanted to use colors that felt semi-realistic while having a little bit of oomph to them. I felt that using colors that were a bit more intense than typical flesh tones would help the Marilyn Monroe portrait pop off the ads better.

So, this seemed like the perfect time to break out my new Arteza acrylic paint set. Between that and some of my tried and true Liquitex acrylic paint I was able to come up with some poppin’ shades that still passed for Marilyn Monroe's skin tone. 

With colors in hand, it was time to start painting the portrait. I went with a bit of a new technique for this painting that feels a bit Pointillism meets Impressionism meets Pop Art…? By painting with a lighter hand and leaving some “gaps” I was also able to let the ads shine through a bit.

After I finished painting the portrait, I went back in and added a few strategically placed word cutouts— things like Chanel, Hollywood, etc.

I’m really happy with turned out and I think can finally say I’ve successfully painted a portrait of Marilyn Monroe.

To all the collagers out there, how long does it take you to complete a project?

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