Elements: Color, Shape, Texture

'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.

 Students added a horizon line and mixed different values of green and yellow for the grass

The finishing touches of this project will include a watercolor wash over the sky and finishing touches of leaves over some of the tree branches.. 

Pointillism

Third graders have been learning their Warm and Cool colors, they are applying the concept of warm and cool colors to their pointillism project. They are also using their knowledge of foreground, background, and horizon line to complete their pointillist work.

We studied the work of George Seurat and his pointillism (dot painting) 

Students drew a tree, and chose either warm or cool colors to create a pointillist amount of leaves.

They used the back end of the brush to create dots in the leaves.

 

After allowing a day to dry the art, students began drawing a horizon line, small details in the background and at least one detail in the foreground.