Artists Study: Pointillism & Seurat

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Moving into our Botany work, we started with an Artists Study of the painter Georges Seurat and dabbled in the art form he created called pointillism. Instead of blending colours on a palette, he combined tiny dots to give the eye the impression of many shades.

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We started by framing our paper and giving a watercolour wash of blue for the background. Once dry, we returned to a limited palette of acrylics: light and dark blue, green, light and dark pink and yellow. Cotton tips were provided to give the dot effect.

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With a pencil, lightly sketch a rectangle in the bottom center of your paper (vase structure).

Using dark and light blue, fill in the rectangle with dots, using light blue to highlight areas touched by sun.

On top of vase, make a bowl shape with green dots (foliage). Add some dark and light blue to break up colour.

With your pencil draw several large and small circles on top of foliage (flowers).

Using dark and light pink, fill in the circles with dots.

Around the circles add patches of green (foliage). Add yellow to highlight.

For the background, use only light shades of yellow, pink and blue. 

Dark shades draw the eye and take the forefront.

 

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Mr. loves to be involved in painting, but mostly for the incentive of getting messy. He also likes using the materials in unique ways. He did start with a rectangle and some dots-but forged a new path for his work thereafter. He is going through an Orange Period-in which all his work has this hue.

 

We followed up with a story about Seurat in our new read: 'Van Goghs Starry Night: A Childrens History of Art'. The stories follow art chronologically, are classed as historical fiction and always include a photo of original work to further study.

 

Seurats story included his famous painting 'A Sunday Morning on the Island of Grande Jatte', which measured 6.5x 10 feet and took him two years to paint.

 

Looking closely, you can see the dots that make up the entire painting. You can further this study with a jewelers loupe look at nature and even delve into pixelation.