Confetti Strokes

"Confetti" is a term for small, colorful paint strokes that resolve into suggestive detail in the viewer’s eye.

You can find confetti in early painters like Canaletto. But it took off in the 20th century as the impressionist and abstract movements helped realist painters see strokes as having their own existence as pure shapes. Look for confetti in artists like Frank Brangwyn, Walter Everett, John Berkey, and Syd Mead.

I indulge in a sort of confetti, though my own preference is to stop short of strokes that draw too much attention to themselves as strokes.

Here's a detail of the crowd in the distance in Dinosaur Parade from "Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time." The figures were blocked in with a square bristle brush. The detail is handled a bit like a mosaic.


And here's a closeup of a festival scene from Jorotongo, from "Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara." You can see how I sketched the singers in terms of simple confetti-like shapes.