Stippling

Stippling is a drawing, printmaking and painting technique that builds an image out of many small dots rather than lines or continuous strokes. The perceived tone of an area depends on the density of its dots: dots placed close together read as dark, and widely spaced dots read as light, so from a normal viewing distance the eye blends the individual marks into a smooth gradation of value. It is widely used in pen-and-ink illustration and engraving, in scientific and botanical illustration where careful, patient mark-making can render fine texture with precision, and in painting, where Pointillism applies the same dot-based logic with colored paint instead of a single ink. In printmaking, stipple engraving builds an image with flicks of the burin cut as short dots rather than continuous lines, often combined with conventional linear engraving; this dot-based approach is closely related to but distinct from Pointillism, which places dots of several different colors side by side so the eye blends them into new mixed colors, rather than using dots of one color to vary tone alone.