Recently a friend of mine shared a painting where he used Pointillism. I used that as an inspiration for this post. I had a great time doing an art lesson on Georges Seurat with Nadia. Let me start with some background on Pointillism.

Georges Seurat believed that the artist could create mood, harmony and emotion in art by using colors and lines. He painted using small distinct dots of colors directly on the canvas, without mixing the paint.  This way when you stand a distance away, the dots seem to blend in into the desired color.

His style of painting is called Pointillism.  If you look closely at his paintings you will see that they are made out of many tiny dots. His best cited work is “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte”. Here’s a link to more info.

We used paint and q-tips to practice. I drew circles and Nadia filled them with dots.

Then she demanded an allasaurus and a brachiasaurus. So here’s the dinos we painted. She got a little bored with the dots and quickly resorted to using the q-tip to do brush-strokes. It’s also a little hard work for the wrists I guess.

By the way, a quick tip for drawing dinosaurs. I got this book which teaches you to draw any of them in quick 3 easy steps…some embarrassment saved every time she asks for one 🙂

Nadia couldn’t believe George Seurat’s works were entirely dots. I had to really find zoomed-in versions on the web to prove my point. I think we’ll try some Kadinsky abstracts next. Nadia seemed more interested in those.