Pointillism Materials

By Nathan Solon

1. What is Pointillism?

Pointillism is a technique of painting in which a lot of tiny dots are combined to form a picture. The reason for doing pointillism instead of a picture with physical mixing is that, supposedly, physically mixing colors dulls them. Most of the painters of Seurat's time (for more information on Seurat, click here) blended the colors to make a picture with a smoother feeling than Seurat's bright, dotty works.

When two colors are right next to each other your eye mixes them in a process called, "optical mixing." Using optical mixing rather than physical mixing can create a brighter picture. Painting a pointillist piece is a slow and painstaking process. Seurat's famous "A Sunday in the Park on the Island of La Grande Jatte" (more commonly known as "Sunday in the Park"), which covered a wall (81 inches by 120 inches), took him two years to complete. He was known for amazing devotion and concentration. The dots in a pointillist painting can be as small as 1/16 of an inch in diameter! Based on these measurements, "Sunday in the Park" has approximately 3,456,000 dots!

2. Materials Used

Pointillism is usually done in oil, but it's not required. You could do pointillism with almost anything! Oil paint is used because it's thick and doesn't bleed or run. The idea behind pointillism is to not physically mix colors, so if the paint bled it would not be good.

Oil paint is made by mixing oil (usually linseed oil) with pigments. Many pigments are minerals. Oil is added because it makes the pigment easier to apply and it holds the dry particles of pigment together. Artists used to hand-mix their own paint, but now the mixing is usually done mechanically.

The first step in mixing the paint is grinding the pigment so that it gets a good fine consistency and color. There are different kinds of grinding machines for different pigments. Some machines have electric motors which can go at different speeds and strengths, depending on the pigment.

The pigment is then dispersed in the oil. For this "Triple Roll Mills," which have three granite rolls, are used. Many colors must go through several times before they get the right color.