Welcome to our Art History posts. In these posts we will try to create famous masterpieces using different art techniques sometime similar to the ones that the artist used himself. We love art and in case you missed our previous collections you can find them here.
Personally I believe that it is never too early to teach kids about art, art techniques or doodling. If all fails at least your children will be able to identify mayor art works and their authors.
This time we will tackle Georges Seurat who was a French Post-Impressionist painter and draftsman (1859-1891). He is one of the most know painters of the 19 century specifically known for his pointillist paintings. What does that mean? Well see for yourself:
He studied color, optical effects and perception to bring us these incredible works of art. Above Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, 1884-1886, The Art Institute of Chicago.
or this wonderful detail from La Parade de Cirque (1889) showing pointillism, or the technique of painting small dots of pattern that from a far make a full image.
So now lets go back to kids. I wanted to recreate the idea of pointillism without the time consuming technique of actually doing it. I know you can call it lazy but in all honestly I really do not think that my tween is artsy enough, or patient enough to get through this. God knows I’m not.
You will need sandpaper, wax crayons, iron and blank piece of paper.
Draw your favorite subject, place or object. As you can tell I was thinking this may turn out more like another famous artist.
Take a blank piece of paper, place the drawn part on the paper
Iron the blank side of the sand paper. This will melt the wax and create points or dots
wait a few seconds and remove the sand paper, cool
Here you go. You have your own Georges Seurat painting. If you want to make it more detailed you can add more layers of melted wax on top by repeating the process.
As for the sand paper it did start to resemble Monet’s Haystacks, so maybe not all was lost. Two art history lessons in one? Nah, I think next time I will stick with more Seurat worthy subject, like myself.
Authors bio is coming up shortly.
What a great technique – I’ve never seen this before. I think B would love to try it. Thank you so much for sharing it with the Play Academy. I wondered if you would include a link back from your post to the Play Academy to help spread the work about our play linky? Thanks
I like this idea a lot. You explained the process well and I think my kids will really like doing this. I will let you know if we do it. Thanks for sharing it with us.
this looks like a great idea. Can I just clarify – do you draw the picture on the sandpaper?
I am sure we will be giving this a go.