“Some people say they see poetry in my paintings; I see only science.”  ~Georges Seurat

It’s time for Kids Get Arty! My favourite series on the entire planet! For real! It’s a time we get the smalls together and study a great artist that is new to us! It’s a time where we can visit other blogs and see which artist they’ve been studying.

It’s also a time when I call my big sister and her boy E. They are my sources of inspiration when it comes to “the greats.”

This time, they suggested Georges Seurat. Um…who’s that? Seriously, I had no idea! E said he was a Pointillist and that the smalls would be really good at it. So now I had two things to figure out…who Seurat was, and what the heck is a Pointillist?

Once I looked him up and viewed some of the images, I recognized his paintings. Especially this one…It’s called Un Dimanche a la Grande Jatte, and it is painted entirely with little dots of paint. Which brings me to the answer to my second question…

What is Pointillism?So there you have it very simply. And now we’ll get to our project and how I introduced it to the smalls.

We gathered around the computer and we viewed some of Seurat’s paintings together. Here are some of their reactions…

“Holy moly! That looks REAL!”

“Those are all DOTS?”

“That must have taken a million years!”

Needless to say, they were impressed. We headed down to our art room to create our own paintings using the Pointillism technique.

I set up make-shift easels for the smalls out of cardboard boxes. This way, each child had their own space to paint and they would have a good view of what they were trying to create with tiny dots of paint…Most Pointillists will use oil paints, as they will not run and drip down the canvas. I just used tempera paint with very little water…Each artist was supplied with bright colours on a palette with q-tips for blending and applying to their paper…They wasted no time in getting started…We talked about some of the things that Georges Seurat believed about colours and the way they could make you feel…Even our smallest Pointillist enjoyed herself at this activity…The older kids worked and worked, blending colours and giggling as they surprised themselves with a new combination!

The two big kids worked on their Pointillism masterpieces for 2 whole hours…They were so proud of their work, they wanted to take it to school for Show and Tell. 

Thank you for joining us for Kids Get Arty today! We’ll be back for another artist 2 months from now! Can’t wait! If you click on the Kids Get Arty badge below, it will take you to Red Ted Art, where you can learn more about this series and even join in the fun!

Thanks for stopping by!

~Arlee, Small Potatoes