Dot Dot Seurat

Georges Seurat was a French born painter during the 1800s. What made him unique was his technique... many tiny dots close together, coined pointillism. He had a love for science, as well as art, and blended the two together when he worked with his traditional technique. He would place dots of different colors close together and let the viewers' eye actually blend the colors together, instead of having to mix the paint himself. I know this just brushes the surface of Seurat, so if you are looking for some more information, check out these sites: webmuseum, the artchive, and wikipedia. There are many site online-- this is just a sampling!

Now that you know a little bit about Georges Seurat, you'll understand what my 7th graders are doing right now. They select a picture of a flower (I have a bunch of samples), draw it with pencil on an 8x8in. paper. Then they will use a Sharpie to create different values while stippling-- using dots, of one color, to create value. The closer the dots are together, the darker the value. The farther apart the dots are, the lighter the value.

My stippling sample

Then They have a choice: they can draw the same flower again (or trace their first drawing) or they can draw another flower for their pointillism picture. It's about 50/50 how the students have chosen so far. About half, or a little more, are done with their stippling and have started on their pointillism, so it will be interesting to see how they finish.

My pointillism sample