Introduction - What is pointillism?

Pointillism is a style of art where pictures are created with dots, rather than brush strokes. Artists George Seurat and Paul Signac developed the technique in 1886. You can find out more HERE.

This video also explains it nicely and gives lots of examples, both classic and more modern. Stop the video at 2:30 as it goes on to give instruction on a pointillism paining project.

 

 

Look at some examples of pointillist art in the teacher lesson slides and what was particular about the style:

• Pictures created with dots, not brush strokes
• Colours blended together
• Sometimes when you step back you can’t see the dots

 

The lesson slides show a variety of examples of pointillist art, including some more modern examples and a fabulous pieces of art called 'Hero' by Miguel Endara. The video demonstrates how the piece was created with an ink pen in a pointillist style, and just how many dots were needed. Although we're not sure just how accurate the number is, there are certainly a lot of them!

 

 

 

2Paint a Picture - Pointillism

Open up Purple Mash and go to the Tools section > Art and Design and open 2Paint a Picture.

 

Open the Pointillism option.

 

 

Show how it paints with dots. You can hold down the mouse button and it will keep adding dots. It also varies the shade of the colour you choose to improve the look of your work. You still have the water and colour memory option that we found in the impressionism tool. 

 

 

Pointillism Task

Ask the class to have a go at either replicating one of the famous pointillist paintings from the lesson slides (or find some of your own) or perhaps to create a pointillist version of a photograph, like the landscapes in the slides (or some of your own).

Encourage them to keep their brush size small so the dots don't get too large and lose their effect. Begin with the background and build the picture up from the back, adding on top of what was there and adding detail... and be patient!

Here’s an example of The Seine at La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat, created with 2Paint a Picture.

 

Ensure everyone saves their work at the end of the lesson. 

 

Plenary

If they save to the shared class area you can open some of the students' work up on screen and evaluate as a class how closely they stuck to the artistic style they were trying to replicate, and compare it to the image they were working from.

Ask the class - Which of the styles do you prefer from the last two lessons - impressionism and pointillism? Did you make use of the water tool? What did you like or dislike about the tools?