Stippling is a great way for students to learn texture, shading and most of all, patience; so here’s some ideas for how to teach stippling to your art students.
Introduce Stippling
First, I explain that stippling is a technique where artists use small dots of ink, pencil or paint to create shading and texture. I often teach stippling after teaching blending and more simplistic shading techniques. I emphasize that it’s about building values and textures by varying the density and spacing of the dots. We look at examples of well known artwork that uses stippling (like works by Georges Seurat or modern illustrators) so they can see examples of the technique.
Start Basic
To begin, we complete a value scale entirely with dots. I show them how to create a basic dot using a Sharpie marker. Students then cluster dots together, to create darker values, and space them out to create the lightest value. This is the key to achieving depth and dimension in stippling. After creating a value scale, students apply their knowledge of creating values to create the illusion of a sphere from a circle. Next, they create a cylinder, a domino and a form of their choice. These prompts are on a worksheet that I created for this practice.
Stippling Tools
I use ultra fine-tip Sharpie markers, Micron pens or similar pens because they create clean, consistent dots. Pencils and paint can also be used to mimic the technique, though pen and ink generally give a stronger stippling effect. When working large, I often provide my students with fine point and chisel tip Sharpies to fill in areas that have darker values to speed up the process.
Stippling Art Lessons
I have used colorful fine point markers to create mini landscape drawings inspired by Georges Seurat. I think it is important to keep the paper smaller to eliminate boredom. However, my favorite art project is my Georgia O’Keeffe Inspired Stippling Still Life Lesson. I provide my students with close up photos of succulents and they lightly create a contour line pencil drawing of the succulent on watercolor paper. Next, they use watercolor to fill in the drawing with color. Lastly, they add stippling. They begin with the implied line to create the edge of the leaves and clump dots to create shadows and the illusion of overlapping on the opposite end. The area between should gradually fade from faint to darker. As I stated earlier, they have the option to use fine and chisel point markers to fill in areas with the darkest values closest to the stem.
More information about my stippling lesson is available here.
Encourage Patience and Persistence
Surprisingly, I always get positive feedback on this lesson or other stippling art projects. My students love the process and seeing their progress. I remind students that stippling takes time and precision. I stress that it’s okay if they make mistakes, and it’s normal for the process to feel slow at first. We take breaks, such as gallery walks around the room if they start to feel frustrated or bored. Most of the time it is quite the opposite and they feel that this technique can be relaxing and meditative.
Reflection
As always, I ask my students to reflect on their process. What did they find difficult? What worked well? This helps them internalize what they learned and improves their future work. I always enjoy the end results and my students are always impressed with the outcome as well. In addition, many of my students choose to continue stippling with choice projects too.
Thanks for Reading, Trista
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