Seurat pointillism art lesson for children

Let’s learn about the painting technique pointillism and create art inspired by the famous French artist, Georges Seurat.

Seurat pointillism art lesson for children

Join this painting lesson to learn about the famous artist Georges Seurat, the painting technique of pointillism, and paint your own pointillism colour wheel.

This project is part of our art lessons about famous artists.

In this article you can:

:: learn about the famous French artist Georges Seurat

:: learn about the painting technique he invented, pointillism

:: see examples of his art

:: learn about colour theory

:: create a colour wheel using pointillism

:: find links to more famous art lessons

Ready-made famous art lessons for children

Use our ready-made art lesson plans to make art with Picasso, Miro, O’Keefe, Van Gogh and many more.

Our Exploring Great Artists curriculum gives you everything you need to teach an exciting art program inspired by the great artists of the world. You’ll have profiles of each artist, materials lists, lesson plans, and creative, hands-on art projects for every featured artist, so you can easily deliver the best art lessons around.

See more details and choose your first famous art lesson here.

Materials needed

:: piece of paper, card or paper plate (You might like to use the colour wheel printable from NurtureStore’s Free Printables Library – see below for details)

:: red, yellow and blue paint

:: cotton buds

:: Christmas Bauble printable, if you are joining this lesson as part of NurtureStore’s Ten Days of Christmas Art Baubles

Meet famous artist Georges Seurat

Georges Seurat was a French painter. He was born in Paris in 1859 and died in 1891. His paintings featured scenes of life in Paris, including people picnicing in parks and swimming in the river Seine, and famous Paris landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower.

He is most famous for his use of the painting technique called pointillism.

Pointillism means painting with tiny dots in pure colours which visually blend together to create a new colour.

Most artists, if they want to paint with green, for example, would squeeze blue paint and yellow paint from their tubes and mix them together on their palette to make a green paint which then could then apply to their picture. Seurat would instead make dots of pure blue paint on his picture and then make dots of pure yellow paint in the same area of his picture. Your eye and brain ‘read’ these two colours together and see it only as green.

Seurat used colour theory in his paintings to combine colours to get the effect he wanted. He combined dots in pairs of the primary colours of red, yellow, and blue to make areas which looked like the secondary colours of green, purple and orange.

Red dots and yellow dots appear orange.

Blue dots and yellow dots appear green.

Blue dots and red dots appear purple.

Examples of Georges Seurat’s art

Take a look at these examples of Georges Seurat’s art. As you look at them, answer these questions:

:: What can you see?

:: What colours can you see?

:: What does the painting make you think of?

Bathers at Asnieres, 1884

La Parade detail, 1887-8

The Seine Seen From La Grande Jatte, 1888

La Seine à la Grande-Jatte, 1888

Eiffel Tower, 1889

How to make art in Georges Seurat style

Our art project inspired by Georges Seurat will be using the two main motifs of his style:

:: painting with dots of colour

:: mixing primary colour dots to create secondary colours

Using Pointillism to make a colour wheel

Let’s use the pointillism technique of combining colours to make a colour wheel.

You can use the colour wheel printable from NurtureStore’s Free Printables Library for this project. See below for details on how to print. Alternatively, draw a circle on to a piece of paper or card and mark it into it into six equal sectors with a ruler and pencil.

First, fill in three of the sectors (leaving every other sector blank for now) using primary coloured paint, using dots of paint. The primary colours are red, blue and yellow. (You can use our colour theory lesson for children to learn more about the colour wheel.) Dip a cotton bud into red paint and use if to fill one sector with red dots.

Then use another cotton bud to fill in a second sector with blue dots.

And use another cotton bud to fill in the third sector with yellow dots.

Next, combine two primary colours to give the impression of creating a new colour: a secondary colour. The secondary colours are orange, purple and green.

In the empty sector between the red and yellow sectors, use cotton buds to paint circles of both red and yellow. Stand back and notice how your brain sees this combination of two colours as orange.

Then, in the empty sector between the red and blue sectors, use cotton buds to paint circles of both red and blue. Stand back and notice how your brain sees this combination of two colours as purple.

Finally, in the empty sector between the blue and yellow sectors, use cotton buds to paint circles of both blue and yellow. Stand back and notice how your brain sees this combination of two colours as green.

Pointillism Christmas bauble craft

Join our Ten Days of Christmas Art Baubles and create a Georges Seurat bauble!

Use our Christmas bauble printable in place of the colour wheel printable / sheet of card to create your art.

Use a pencil and ruler to divide your Christmas bauble into six even sectors.

Then use cotton buds dipped in red, yellow and blue paint to fill in each sector as described above.

Cut out the bauble from the printable and hang it up on the wall or Christmas tree as part of your Christmas art decorations.

>>> NurtureStore is hosting ten days of art lessons making Christmas art baubles, with ten different designs inspired by famous art and interesting process art techniques. We’re learning about Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky, Yayoi Kusama, Georges Seurat, and Alma Woodsey Thomas, plus exploring marbling, wax resist, squeegee art, printing and collage techniques.

See all the Ten Days of Christmas Art Baubles lessons and get your free bauble printables.

More ready-made art lessons about famous artists

Use our Exploring Great Artists lesson plans to teach a full programme of art lessons based on famous artists. Your children can learn art history while making their own art inspired by the famous artists of the world. All the projects use simple materials, introduce children to interesting art techniques, and can be done in school or at home. See more details and get your copy of Exploring Great Artists here.

Plus, enrich to your art lessons with our Diversify Your Art Curriculum resources, featuring ready-made lessons on contemporary artists of colour from four continents. Great projects your children will love! See more details and get your copy of Diversify Your Art Curriculum here.