'A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — 1884'

Pointillism is essentially the creation of an artwork using only dots; the most famous example happens to be my favorite painting. (Above) (More Here)

Third Graders have been working on the elements of art (Line, Shape, Color, Texture, Value, Space, and Form) to start off the year; and pointillism lessons happen to contain the majority of the elements of art. I love starting the year with this project for establishing painting procedures, expectations, and the full submersion into the elements of art.

Students spent a day practicing tree drawing, learning the simple Y shape goes into each branch, and adding more Y shapes makes the trees more detailed. The following day, students chose warm or cool colors to fill the leaves in the tree, and used qtips to paint the leaves in the trees.

They completed the project by adding a texture to the trees with that same pointillist process. It was cool to see their frustrations of "Only using dots" turn into amazement with how the final product was beginning to turn out.