Thursday | snapshot

We continued our discussion on Post-impressionism today with Pointillism.  Pointillism is often considered part of the Post-impressionist movement.  While Impressionists used small dabs of paint as part of their technique,  Pointillism took this to the next level using only small dots of pure color to compose an entire painting.  Unlike some art movements, Pointillism has nothing to do with the subject matter of the painting. It is a specific way of applying the paint to the canvas.  In Pointillism the painting is made up entirely of small dots of pure color.  Our artist of the day was Georges Seurat - Seurat was the founder of Pointillism.  He studied the science of colors and optics to invent this new technique.  His painting work a lot like computer monitors work today.  His dots were like the pixels on a computer screen. In 1884 Seurat began to work on his masterpiece.  He would use pointillism to paint a huge painting called Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.  It would be 6 feet 10 inches tall by 10 feet 1 inches wide, but would be painted entirely with small dots of pure color.  The painting was so complex that it took him nearly two years of non-stop work to finish.  Each morning he would go to the scene and make sketches.  Then in the afternoon he would return to his studio to paint until late at night.  He kept the painting a secret, not wanting anyone to know what he was doing. Here is art project for the day- pointillism: Students lightly sketched the out­line of a fish. Some included shapes within the fish. Others thought to add kelp, rocks, shells, etc...  Next they traced over pencil lines with a black marker to cre­ate a bold “col­or­ing book” style drawing. Lastly, they filled in each sec­tion of their draw­ings with DOTS of color by dip­ping a Q-tip in the watercolor paint and then press­ing it onto the paper.