What is the pointillism technique?

Painting is one of the most entertaining activities for our children, which also favors their concentration and helps them relax while giving free rein to their creativity… A perfect technique for spending time with the family. Take note of how to do it, step by step!

Pointillism is an artistic technique, created by the neo-impressionists Georges Seurat and Paul Signac at the end of the 1880s, which consists of making a work using tiny dots that favor the concentration of the little ones.

Doing activities with paints, watercolors or plasticine stimulates children. Specifically, the pointillism or divisionism technique consists in the creation of small colored dots that, combined on the canvas, create a complete chromatic image desired by the author.

To achieve this work of art, small artists must carry out several steps:

1. Choosing the subject and the canvas: The size on which you will work is very important because, without a doubt, the larger the surface, the greater the effort to achieve an optimal result.
2. Choice of materials: Although pointillism is focused on painting, the ideal is to encourage the creativity of the little ones by allowing them to use different materials. Most of them focus on acrylic paint and plasticine… although we will also use the pencil to draw the shape and the different spaces that we want to fill with the pointillism technique.
3. We apply the background: To achieve a better effect, children should apply a layer of color to the entire canvas. In this way, they will test your patience while waiting for it to dry. This time can be used to prepare the materials that will be used in the next step.
4. Once we have a colored background, it is complemented by applying the points on different spaces. For those who choose to do it with paint, this work implies a great effort because the size of the dots is what will give the final work the greatest impact. The smaller and closer, the more realism. Those who opt for plasticine have to work beforehand on the formation of small balls, of different colors, which they will later apply to the canvas.
5. All children are surprised how, from a distance, something that has been created only with dots can give an effect of uniformity and homogeneity.

What are the benefits of the pointillism technique?

Through this technique we force them to evaluate in advance the work in which they are inspired to identify the colors, think about how to recreate them with their materials and capture them on the canvas. Apart from creativity itself, these types of activities seek to promote the value of effort in children.

In pointillism there is previous work that forces them to think and value their resources. Furthermore, by drawing inspiration from and building on a work that already exists, they strive to make the recreation as accurate as possible. In the recreation process we see the concentration with which they apply the dots on the canvas and that is a clear example of the effort they put into their work.

It is also a technique that helps them relax and can improve graphomotor skills, thus promoting an improved writing technique.