Pointillism Butterflies

Students viewed artwork by Georges Seurat. They discovered the pointillism technique he used in his art. We discussed how the dots of colors together make something. They also discovered there were no brush strokes or "coloring in" in his artwork. I challenged them to create their own art based on dots of color just like Seurat. I started by giving them a plain piece of art paper. Using a template (I hardly ever do this, by the way) they traced the butterfly form onto their paper. Then each student created areas of color for their butterfly. BUT they had to use mirror symmetry to do it! The hardest part was the next step: adding color to their butterfly without coloring anything in! Such a difficult concept for most, mostly because creating dots is time consuming and requires patience and planning!