Creative explorations Vol 24: Dotted

A sketchbook/art journal prompt to support your art and creative practice.

Photo by Bárbara Fróes on Unsplash

My 100 day project, 100 days of art journaling, finished today, and I’ve maintained an unbroken streak of showing up to my painty table for 100 straight days! Color me surprised!

I wanted to mark this achievement {because I haven’t ever managed to show up for 100 consecutive days for anything!} in some way, which is how I came up with this month’s prompt: DOTTED.

It’s a fun, whimsical little prompt that can encompass a range of styles and ideas, including some “serious” painterly styles — think pointillism. Let’s get started!

Resources + ideas

Polka dots: Polka dots can be a super fun and whimsical pattern to add to your art journals, and there are many ways in which you can use them in your art. See some examples here, here, here, and here.

Make some punchinella: Punchinella is essentially sequin waste, the leftover mylar material left over after sequins are punched out. It makes a lovely stencil that you can use in your art journals.

To make your own punchinella style stencil, simply get a piece of transparent plastic {vellum works well} or even cardstock and punch out some holes with a hole punch.

Making your own punchinella stencils offers a lot of creative opportunities — you can make your stencils symmetrical, scattered, and if you have hole punches in different sizes, you can even make a mixed size stencil!

Bonus tip: If you make your stencil with card stock, you can use it as collage fodder when it starts to tear/disintegrate!

Add some sequins: If you make your own punchinella, especially with cardstock, don’t throw away the punched out dots! You can stick them down in your art journal and paint over them — it makes for a very interesting textured effect.

If you have some sequins in your stash, why not pull some out and stick them down in your art journal? Include them in a stacked collage that you can use as a focal piece in your art journal spread, or scatter them onto your page like colorful confetti.

Mixed media dots: Grab a piece of cardstock for some mixed media play. Go wild with colors, textures, marks, stencils and stamps. Don’t worry about cohesion or composition or making things pretty, because you’re going to punch out some mixed media dots from this master sheet. Use circle punches in different sizes, or use a compass to draw some circles in different sizes and cut them out. Et viola! You should have a bunch of mixed media dots that you can use in your journal.

Start with a dot: You don’t have to be absolutely literal with this prompt. You can go completely abstract, use a circle template to add in painterly dots to your piece, or use a sponge to create a dotted effect in your painting.

Explore pointillism: Pointillism is a painting technique that uses small, distinct dots of color in patterns to form an image. Though it was traditionally done with oil colors, you can use almost any art supply with this technique: acrylics, markers, color pencils, even an ink pen or ball point pen. Need a quick tutorial? Here you go.

Artist spotlight: Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama is famous for her use of polka dots in her paintings, sculptures and art installations. For her, the process of creating hundreds of dots is meditative. Read a bit about her life and art or check out this interview with the artist, watch this video on the Harn Museum of Art website for a lesson on Yayoi Kusama-inspired dot art, and catch the documentary Kusama: Infinity on Internet Archives.

I look forward to seeing your take on this prompt! You can email your finished pieces to me on shinjinim@substack.com or share them on Notes if you use the Substack app. If you share on Instagram, tag me @moderngypsy.in

Like this prompt? Share it with your friends and invite them into our virtual studio. If you’re on the Substack app, you can tap on the like button or restack to Notes to let me know you enjoyed this post.