Pointillism

A Sunday on La Grande Jatte by Georges Pierre Seurat

In my art history class in college I was introduced to Georges Pierre Seurat. He quickly became one of my favorites along with Monet. This painting titled “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” was created by Seurat using a technique called pointillism.

Pointillism technique was developed in the late 1880’s as part of the Post Impressionist Movement. At that time many artists started using this technique which involved painting tiny distinct dots next to each other until the image is formed.

Seurat lived from 1859 – 1891 in Paris, France. He began working on this painting in the summer of 1884 at the age of 25. I remember seeing this painting on the large projector in the art history auditorium and was completely mesmerized by how beautiful it was and amazed it was painted with nothing more than a bunch of dots.

I loved this technique so much that I decided to give it a try. So I created this 5×7 inch Killer Whale image using a black fine tipped pen on paper. It was very tedious and my hand became pretty sore after just a short while. The entire image took me about a week to complete but l couldn’t imagine doing a very large painting like Seurat’s which measured 81.7×121.25 inches and took 2 years to complete. I think my hand would fall off 😂

I must say that after creating my “little” piece of pointillism art, I had a whole new appreciation for the artists who used this Pointillism technique.

I hope this inspires you to create some art today! I’m taking a short break and will be back soon.

Thanks for stopping by!!!

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