Crafty Friday: Pointillism

Today’s Crafty Friday lesson is on Pointillism, or painting with dots. It’s a super fun and super easy craft for all ages.

Here’s what you need:

paper

paint

Q-tips

We started with an introduction to pointillism and to artist Georges Seurat. If you’re not familiar with the name, you’re probably familiar with his work, particularly this piece:

This painting is titled Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. It’s ten feet wide and took Seurat two years to complete. If you were to look closely at the piece you will notice that it is painted with thousands of tiny dots. It’s spectacular.

The idea behind Pointillism is that instead of blending colors together, you paint complementary colors together in a series of dots. Using opposing colors from the color wheel in such a way would make the colors appear brighter, and your eyes would do the blending on their own. Here’s another example of Seurat’s work where the use of dots is more apparent:

The Seine and la Grande Jatte – Springtime

After we learned about Pointillism, Finn got to work creating his own Pointillist picture. Using a variety of paint colors and Q-tips as paintbrushes, Finn started dotting his paper.

Now patience is something Georges Seurat had when creating his works, but for Finn…well patience runs thin. The dot thing got old after a couple of minutes, and lines and color mixing took precedence.

However, with some encouragement Finn got back to dotting his paper. Here’s his swirly, spotted creation:

Happy crafting!

nessa dee