How can I use this resource?

With this resource, you can discover the life and work of Georges Seurat, the French painter who created a new technique of painting with dots of pure colors. You can also color 25 templates of different parts of his painting and glue them together to make a large poster. This is a fun way to practice teamwork and pointillism. You can use this resource to decorate your classroom or bulletin board with a stunning, giant replica of A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

What does this resource contain?

This resource contains 24 templates for making a giant poster of A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Each template has a part of the painting that you can color according to the original or your own imagination. The templates are based on the painting that is in the Art Institute of Chicago. The resource contains four different sizes:

• Postcards (5.8 x 4.1 in / 14.8 x 10.5 cm)

• Miniature (4.3 x 2.9 in / 11 x 7.4 cm)

• Study painting (7.5 x 5 in / 19 x 12.7 cm)

• Poster (37.8 x 25.2 in / 96 x 64 cm)

You can print the templates on white paper and color them with crayons, markers, pencils, or paints. The resource also provides you with some information about the artist Georges Seurat.

How Seurat painted with dots: The art of Pointillism

Georges Seurat (1859 - 1891) was a French painter and the inventor of “pointillism“. The term “pointillism“ comes from the word point and refers to point to point painting. The painting is one of the most famous paintings of this style and shows people relaxing in the sun in a park on the island of Seine. Because such a painting is entirely composed of colorful dots - even the shadows - it is a very time consuming technique. It took Seurat two years to complete this painting.

So why paint in this style? He could have mixed the colors he needed for his painting on the color palette and then applied them with a brush. A pointillist, however, does not mix colors but paints only unmixed dots of color- he only uses “prismatic“ colors, which are the colors of the rainbow. The rainbow color dots then optically blend together to form the images. The actual image is not on the canvas but is created in the eye of the viewer. This color effect gives pointillist paintings their characteristic bright and peculiar glow.