Pointillism is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of pure color are applied in patterns to form an image. Georges Seurat developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism. The term Pointillism was first coined by art critics in the late 1880s to ridicule the works of these artists and is now used without its earlier mocking connotation
The technique relies on the perceptive ability of the eye and mind of the viewer to mix the color spots into a fuller range of tones and is related closely to Divisionism, a more technical variant of the method. Divisionism is concerned with color theory, where pointillism is more focused on the specific style of brushwork used to apply the paint. It is a technique with few serious practitioners and is notably seen in the works of Seurat, Signac and Cross.
The practice of Pointillism is in sharp contrast to the more common methods of blending pigments on a palette or using the many commercially available premixed colors. Pointillism is analogous to the four-color CMYK printing process used by some color printers and large presses, Cyan (blue), Magenta (red), Yellow and Key (black). Televisions and computer monitors use a pointillist technique to represent images but with Red, Green, and Blue (RGB) colors.
