Art Exercises to Imitate Georges Seurat

Georges-Pierre Seurat was born in Paris on December 2, 1859, in Paris. He attended the School of Fine Arts in Paris in 1878 and 1879. Georges studied the works of Rembrandt and Francisco de Goya.

His family had plenty of money and supported him while he worked on his paintings. His most famous painting is Sunday on the Island of La Grande Jatte. He used a new painting technique called pointillism on this painting. He place thousands of tiny dots side by side on the canvas. He liked to experiment with new ways of painting. Even though he died at a young age, he will always be remembered for his original method of painting.

Pointillism

Select a page from a coloring book. Make a copy of it. Fill in one copy by painting with large brush strokes. Fill in the second copy by painting with little dots of paint. (Q-tips work well for this). Which picture took longer to paint? Which one do you like better?

Color Mixing

Try this mixing experiment - Mix up the following colors:

- orange (red + yellow)
- purple (red + blue)
- green (blue + yellow)

Using a paintbrush, apply a circle of color to a piece of paper. On a second piece of paper, draw three circles. Apply dots of blue and red inside the first circle, dots of red and yellow inside the second circle, and dots of yellow and blue inside the third circle.

Landscapes

Georges Seurat painted many landscape pictures. Make a landscape picture of your own by cutting shapes and figures out of construction paper. Place the large objects at the bottom of the page. They will appear to be close to you. Place the smaller objects near the top of the page. They will appear to be far away.
Hold up the second piece of paper. What do you see? Does your eye mix the color for you? Can you see purple, orange and green?