Pointillism A Painting Style

After reading this PowerPoint you should be able to tell me… Who invented pointillism What pointillism is When it was first used Why we use dots

What’s Pointillism? Pointillism is an original form of art created by George Seurat. Pointillism is a bunch of tiny dots formed together to make a picture.

The Movement.. Pointillism began in France in 1886, and continued till 1906—select artists worked in this style for about 20 years before developing new techniques. Why dots? When two colors are next to each other, your eye mixes them and that is called optical mixing. Using optical mixing instead of physically mixing can make a brighter picture. These artists believed that separate touches of pigments resulted in a greater vibrancy of color to the human eye.

Examples…

Impressed? This style of painting seems easy to do, but it is very hard to make it work. You need to plan the colors you will use so that the work does not begin to look muddy. Pointillism takes a long time. For example, Seurat’s “A Sunday in the Park” took him two years to complete, covers a wall (81 inches by 120 inches) and has about 3,456,000 dots!

Georges Seurat Paul Signac Henri-Edmond Cross The Artists… Georges Seurat Paul Signac Henri-Edmond Cross

Georges Seurat A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, 1884

Georges Seurat Circus Sideshow, 1887

Paul Signac Port-en-Bessin, 1888

Paul Signac Snow, Boulevard De Clichy, Paris, 1886

Henri-Edmond Cross The Return of the Fisherman, 1896

Henri-Edmond Cross Landscape with Stars, 1905-1908

Henri-Edmond Cross Les Champs-Elysees, 1898

Some student work Student examples

Here is a picture used to inspire one students work

Here is the student’s pointillism work 

The next slide has your first picture to try and copy using only points.