No Thank You! (Study)

Lichtenstein planned his iconic Pop paintings of women from romance comics in sketches such as this one, in which he carefully worked out the composition and color scheme. Slight changes to the source panel reveal the care with which he composed his image. For instance, in order to balance the vertical features of the left side, he replaced the backyard that was to the right of the figure with elements of classical architecture. The small format of these studies was determined by the size of the opaque projector Lichtenstein used to enlarge the image onto canvas.