Purple Flowers

It has been probably over a decade since I used stippling (marks with numerous small dots or specks) in my art, but at an old client's request I revisited this technique in color. My past works were always in black and white, as was all my art back then. When I was in seventh or eighth grade I thought I had invented this new style after I saw a poster's dot matrix up close and tried to emulate it in my own ink drawings. I took one of my drawings to a teacher and proudly proclaimed that I had invented an entirely new technique. My teacher was quite graceful in deflating my ego.

The process is quite time consuming, but the slow building up means a lot of control. It helps to blur your eyes a little while you work to see what it looks like from a distance. Georges Seurat, who is probably the most famous artist who used this technique only completed a few works in his lifetime. One a year and he would do numerous studies before hand in chalk to know exactly what he wanted before he began. In contrast to his rather ominous drawings with rich tones and velvety blacks, his paintings were incredibly bright because the mixing of color was an optical illusion and so the actual paint was not dulled by over-brushing.