By: Becky Manning
Before painting a pointillist piece, Seurat started out with a tonal sketch.
The tonal sketch is a sketch of the idea that you want for your pointillist
piece. It helps show areas of light and dark with shading. To make your tonal
sketch, you can use a pencil or any writing utensil. You can also use a conte
crayon like Seurat did. The conte crayon is a black,
chalk like crayon.
When you begin the painting, you paint your background and foreground in with paint. Then you do the pointillist step of the piece. The pointillist step of the piece is adding dots of color. Seurat only used small, almost microscopic dots. We used varied sized dots to give more effect, and to save time. Also, in adding the dots on the background and foreground, you can add lighter or darker colors to make areas of the painting lighter or darker. You also use darker colors to make shadows of objects in the piece. Then, from a distance your pointillist piece looks like a regular painted picture, because the dots optically blend together; but up-close it is a world of millions of dots.