Sunday 27 November 2011

What's the Point of Pointillism?

Mt Warning, shown actual size (the painting, not the mountain)
Hello!

Question:  What do you get if you combine watercolour, acrylic paint, glitter glue and the wooden end of a paintbrush?

Answer: Happier by the minute!

Today's post features another attempt at painting Mt Warning using a different style of application, called pointillism.

So what is pointillism, you ask?  Well according to the website source library thinkquest  (I'm sure it's reputable, it came up second on my Google search!) :
Pointillism is an original form of art created by George Seurat. Pointillism is a bunch of tiny dots formed together to make a picture. Why we use pointillism instead of using a paintbrush and just painting is because pointillism is brighter and the other kinds of paintings can be dull.  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!( http://library.thinkquest.org/J0110603/pointillism.html )
In case you were wondering, the exclamation point was not my over exuberant addition to the quote.  That would have to be the one downside of using this method of applying paint - it takes agggggeeeeesssss.  This little beauty took me probably three to four hours, and I admit my approach to applying each point was sloppy.

Still, I do truly believe the pointillism method could be used by anyone as a great form of stress release for pent up anger - you can stab the paintbrush as hard as you want on your paper and unlike punching a pillow, you actually get to make pretty effects in the paint. And when you see how pretty your painting looks, you really do feel happier by the minute.   How cool is that?!

Anyway, thanks for stopping by, I'll see you around soon,

Kate
x

1 comment:

  1. I love pointilism. This isn't your best painting of this scene, but it's definitely worth practising some more.

    ReplyDelete

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