Pointillism Art for Kids with Seurat
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I do not consider myself an artist, but I really enjoy doing art with my kids. It stretches me and pushes me, and I am getting better! This week we learned pointillism art by studying the painter Georges Seurat.
To start the Georges Seurat art lesson, I had to look up the pronunciation of his name. (Yeah, I don’t speak French!)
Who is Georges Seurat?
Seurat is a French post impressionist artist from the 1800’s. Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, together are known for devising the painting technique of pointillism. This new method of painting actually began a new movement in art called Neo-impressionism.
What is Pointillism?
Pointillism art is done with oil paints and is basically just painting with dots. But in a more complicated description, it is a technique where you do not mix the pigments of color but instead have varying dots of color that require the viewer to combine the colors. Their mind and eye do it for them.
Other artists who painted using the pointillist style include: Vincent Van Gogh, Maximilien Luce, Henri-Edmond Cross, Camille Pissarro and Théo van Rysselberghe.
We tried it out on our art projects and loved the look of it!
For our Seurat art study, I printed and laminated about 10 different paintings of his. we talked about his life a bit and read some books about him. Then we worked on recreating art in his style.
Some of us chose to imitate one of his paintings and some of us chose to do our own thing.
We started by sketching out what we wanted to draw then painted it in with painted dots using q-tips. It is a time-consuming project, but really a lot of fun!
Kids Books on Georges Seurat
Georges Seurat: Getting to Know the World’s Greatest Artists, by Mike Venezia
Sunday with Seurat (board book), by Julie Merberg and Suzanne Bober
Make a Masterpiece- Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (Dover Activity Book)
A Sunday on La Grande Jatte Tunnel Book: Take a Peek at Seurat’s Masterpiece! (Take a Peek series)Â byÂ
Katie and the Bathers by James Mayhew
Splat! Another Messy Sunday by Lin Oliver
Check out some of our other Artist Study Posts:
Warhol, Kandinsky, Klimt, Arcimboldo, Klee, Cézanne, Picasso, Monet, Pollock, Lichtenstein
I had not considered teaching pointillism in our homeschool art until seeing this post. There’s a local artist where we live that my son and I have watched a couple times but we haven’t tried it ourselves. Thank you for the inspiration to try it out.