by Ann Marie Dwyer

Created on: March 28, 2007   Last Updated: April 12, 2007

Stippling is the art of creating outlines or a picture using single dots. "Stipple" comes from the Latin word for pierce. Stippling takes two forms: pouncing and piercing.

Pouncing may be done with felt tipped pens (easiest), chalks and pastels (difficult) and super fine paint brushes (expert). To stipple by piercing is to use needles and pins through paper or brads and nails through metal.

Pouncing stippling is the most common form used today. When you choose your subject, begin by drawing the "line". The key to making lines is to space your dots close together and evenly. Touch your pen to the paper perpendicularly, creating one dot. To fill in the spaces between lines, create your dots with enough space between them to insert dots of other colors.

By using the combinations of the color wheel, you can create the illusion of blush on a cheek, the shine on a piece of fruit or the stripes in an animal's fur. By closely spacing dots of the same color, you can create the illusion that the space is completely filled. Remember, dots should never touch one another.

Be careful to make dots uniform in size when blending colors. Larger dots may be made in large blocks of color, but it will show much more of your medium and detract from the overall quality of the work.

Piercing stippling can be done in two different ways: tracing paper design and free hand. Both forms of piercing stippling will allow either color or light through the medium to show the design.

Transfer a design onto tracing paper and secure it to your paper or metal sheet. Pierce the material with needles and pins or nails of various sizes to create "dots" of different sizes along the outline of the transfer. Back your design with paper or cloth of a contrasting color to show the piercings.

Free hand piercing is more difficult. How to begin is to free hand pierce your design into the metal. A sharpshooting artist in the United States has begun to stipple his copper sheets with rifle cartridges. The larger the hole you make, the more light or contrast can show through the metal. Note: Metal stippling should not include filling in spaces, but only outlines.

Stippled metal can be mounted in a frame to hang in a window, bent into a circle or a square to be a luminary, or backed with a contrasting fabric to show the detail of the stippling. Metal stippling it easiest with thin copper sheets and most difficult with steel sheeting.

Start simple, and you will be pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to stipple a beautiful picture!

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