You know that the school year is about to come to an end when you are required to paint using pens or namely, ‘Pointillism’. This has got to be the most challenging artwork my batch mates have to finish. I am totally dreading this day to come as my Art teacher told me to instruct the whole batch on how to do Pointillism. I tried it way back 2012 when I heard that Seniors were doing the said technique so curiosity killed the cat so I tried my luck in Pointillism. (Little did you know that I even met one of my fave bloggers because of this!) I created my first ever painting and lo and behold, I discovered that I do have a knack for arts. My first portrait was Katy and I did countless paintings ever since!

Pointillism is, by far, the best form of painting I have tried. You only need few materials to create your own artwork. Being the charitable (Talaga lang ha!) person that I am, allow me to share a fool-proof technique I realized few months ago. I came up to one easy technique for you guys (lucky you, batch mates, I decided to create a blog post about this just for you. See the love? ) and I hope this pointillism hack helps!

What you need: 

• Fine tip pens
• Oslo paper
• Copy of your subject (same size as your painting)
• Pencils
• Paper clips

Step 1

First thing to do is to have your subject. It can be your selfie, a celebrity, a landscape or anything which is easy for your liking. As much as possible, search for desaturated photos because they are much easier to use. They also save you from the hassle of photo editing. I personally love searching for art inspo and random stuff on Pinterest.

I chose this artwork because it’s already converted into a stencil. Stencils are A LOT EASIER to paint. Trust me. If you prefer to use photos, I suggest that you should use Adobe photoshop to convert pictures into Threshold. Also, you can check out tutorials here, or directly convert them through this site.

Step 2

Disclaimer: This method is entirely my own and this is what I can suggest for you to paint easier. All of these techniques are not from the school nor from my Art teacher.

Flip your copy and shade its back portion.

It has to look like this after shading. Only shade the needed part and the small details. I suggest you should use charcoal pencils for this. (Or if you want to, carbon paper will also do the work but it can’t be erased.)

Afterwards, you have put it over  your oslo paper. Clip the papers together for a better result.

Trace the everything, never ever ever leave small details.

Look closely and you will notice the pencil marks.

Unclip the papers and you already have the outline of your painting. The outline will turn out very light so you have to trace it using a pencil if you want to.

Step 3

Pick up your weapons and start painting.Trace all the black parts of your painting and fill them in.

Start doing the lighter areas to accentuate your artwork. For this part, just paint it like the usual way but you have to leave some white spaces to create shadows and accents just like this:

Erase the pencil marks afterwards. Do this until you finally finish your work.

Use bigger tips (0.5,0.8) for black areas to save time and use smaller points (0.2,0.1) for the shadows.

Et voilà! (Even though the painting is still in progress, haha, but rest assured that I can post the finished work on my accounts!) I hope you learned something from this tutorial.

If you want to see more of my works in progress and paintings, check out my Instagram! For enquiries, feel free to leave your comments below or ask me on Twitter. Don’t forget to subscribe!