Pointillism is a painting technique where artists create images entirely from tiny dots of pure color placed close together. Instead of mixing paint on a palette, pointillist painters dab thousands of small dots onto the canvas, letting the viewer’s eye blend the colors when they step back to look at the painting.

The French painter Georges Seurat helped develop and popularize this method in the 1880s. His famous painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte shows people relaxing in a park, but up close, you see it’s made entirely of colored dots. Where he wanted green grass, Seurat placed blue dots next to yellow dots. Your eye naturally mixes them into green. Where he wanted purple shadows, he used red and blue dots side by side.

Pointillism requires incredible patience. A single painting might contain millions of dots and take years to complete. But the results can create a shimmering, luminous quality that's different from traditional painting. The colors seem to vibrate and glow because they're optically mixed in your eye rather than physically mixed on a palette.

You can try pointillism yourself with markers or colored pencils. Draw a simple picture using only dots. You'll discover that making a smooth sunset or a realistic face takes far more dots than you'd expect, which helps explain why pointillist masterpieces are so impressive.