So What’s the Point?

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Pointillism (pron.:

/ˈpwɛntɨlɪzəm/ ) is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of pure color form an image are applied in patterns to

• • • Pointillism is in sharp contrast to the traditional methods of blending pigments on a palette . Pointillism is analogous to the four-color CMYK printing process used by some color printers and large presses that place dots of Cyan (blue), Magenta (red), Yellow, and Key (black). Televisions and computer monitors use a similar technique to represent image colors using Red, Green, and Blue (RGB) colors.

The painting technique used for pointillist color mixing is at the expense of the traditional brushwork used to delineate texture .

The majority of pointillism is done in oil paints. Anything may be used in its place, but oils are preferred for their thickness and tendency not to run or bleed

Georges Seurat 1859-1891

• One of the first artists to use this style. Post impressionism George Seurat used a series of dots to create his works of art. He lived a short life of 32years forever changing the face of artistic works to come. The cause of his death is uncertain, and has been variously attributed to a form of meningitis, pneumonia, infectious angina, and diphtheria

• Next time we can visit Ben Day dots and Rob Lichtenstein http://www.creativebloq.com/graphic design/pointillism-examples-dot-art-11121135

• The Ben-Day Dots printing process, named after illustrator and printer Benjamin Day , is similar to Pointillism . Depending on the effect, color and optical illusion needed, small colored dots are closely-spaced, widely-spaced or overlapping. Magenta dots, for example, are widely-spaced to create pink. 1950s and 1960s pulp comic books used Ben-Day dots in the four process colors (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) to inexpensively create shading and secondary colors such as green, purple, orange and flesh tones.

• Ben-Day dots differ from halftone dots in that the Ben-Day dots are always of equal size and distribution in a specific area. To apply the dots to a drawing the artist would purchase transparent overlay sheets from a stationery supplier. The sheets were available in a wide variety of dot size and distribution, which gave the artist a range of tones to use in the work. The overlay material was cut in the shapes of the tonal areas desired—i.e. shadow or background or surface treatment and rubbed onto the specific areas of the drawing with a burnisher. When photographically reproduced as a line cut for letterpress printing, the areas of Ben-Day overlay provided tonal shading to the printing plate.

• Ben-Day dots were considered the hallmark of American artist Roy Lichtenstein, who enlarged and exaggerated them in many of his paintings and sculptures, especially his interpretations of contemporary comicbook and magazine images. Other illustrators and graphic designers have used enlarged Ben-Day dots in print media for a similar effect.

Roy Lichtenstein 1923-1997

One of Roy’s famous works on display in Europe, “WHAM”

Onomonopia

• • Defined as: The formation or use of words such as buzz or murmur that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to.

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A link to an interview with Roy

http://youtu.be/nPRmSAsq YyQ •

Mabey next time we can explore…

Around the same period of time Andy Warhol was becoming more popular and took commercial artistry to new heights