seurat's dots

tempera paint, flower images, q-tips, watercolor paper,
pencils, images of seurat's paintings

Seurat's painting Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grand Jatte took him 2 years to paint, its dimensions are over 10 ft wide by 6 ft tall. Seurat spent his life studying color theory and he used the play of light and illusion to blend the colors optically. Very exciting!

After passing out images of flowers I found in a flower catalog, I asked the students to sketch lightly the flower they had chosen. I demonstrated how to hold the pencil to sketch and how different it looks compared to when you are writing. I asked them to step outside their comfort zone and to sketch very large, and to please avoid detail because the all the fun will be in painting their flower using the pointillism technique. I found these great little containers (like the ones that ranch dressing comes in at a take out eatery) at a local restaurant supply, they are absolutely perfect for putting a little paint in and easy enough for the kids to navigate on their small desks, plus you can purchase the lids which makes it even more perfect for saving paint for the next class. Using q-tips and dots they filled in their flower drawings with the colors of their choice. Of course you will need to stress "please, resist the urge to paint with the q-tips, dots only!" The outcome will be beautiful and impressive. They are fun to look at closely and at a distance, give it a try.