Part of Lesson Plan: Life Size Cardboard Cutout in High Resolution

Activity Overview / Details

From impressionism to pixels- Brief history

How did we start to measure in pixels?

Pixel - In digital imaging, a pixel (or picture element) ^{[1 ]} is the smallest addressable screen element in raster graphics; it is the smallest unit of picture that can be controlled. Each pixel has its own address. The address of a pixel corresponds to its coordinates. Pixels are normally arranged in a two-dimensional grid, and are often represented using dots or squares.

Resolution -The amount of detail that the camera can capture is called the resolution, and it is measured in pixels. The more pixels a camera has, the more detail it can capture and the larger pictures can be without becoming blurry or "grainy."

How does the style of painting in La Grand Jatte from Georges Seurat, a French Post Impressionist - connect to the developments in resolution and the digital image of today?

From Impressionism to Pointillism to four color printing to digital resolution, a fascinating study of dots/squares to make the eye understand is presented. Pointillism is analogous to the four-color CMYK printing process used by some color printers and large presses that place dots of Cyan (blue), Magenta (red), Yellow, and Key (black). Televisions and computer monitors use a similar technique to represent image colors using Red, Green, and Blue (RGB) colors which lead to our current technique to produce digital images.

Enlarge La Grand Jatte to show the numerous paint dabs that combine to make an impressionist painting.

Enlarge a digital image of La Grand Jatte to show the pixels used to digitally represent the photo.