I taught Lil Bit about Pointillism earlier this week.

If you skipped that day in Art History, Pointillism is a painting technique where the artist uses dots of color to create a piece of art.

We are using Pointillism as a very loose term in this little art project she and I did, since after all, an afternoon project with a preschooler will not produce a Seurat...but it can produce a pretty neat piece of subway art.

Our dots aren't supposed to be a realistic picture, but rather is an abstract representation of autumn leaves. Our background, a brilliant blue, represents the sky.

And the word, THANKS is a reference to Thanksgiving.

And so here's how you can create a similar piece of art:

Take a blank canvas and paint it your background color. Allow to dry. Decide what you want your text to be, and use painters tape to lay it out.


Paint over the entire canvas with another round of the same background color. This is to ensure that if there is any leakage under the painters tape, it is the background color.



Once the second background coat is completely dry, take a paper plate and squirt your foreground colors on it. have cotton swabs on hand--at least enough for one swab for each color. Then explain to the preschooler that we are doing only dots, and show her how to do it. Then let her go at it.



I helped a little--why should I let the four year old have all the fun?--and suggested that certain areas need more of different colors to try and get an even sprinkling of color.


And then we left the painting to dry. We let the this coat dry overnight, since our painting technique didn't lend itself to an even coat of paint. Then I carefully lifted up the painters tape.

I think it turned out pretty neat, don't you?(Sorry for the color quality, Sandy meant that outdoor light quality was nil)