Valentine Heart Painting

Jim Dine is considered an important contemporary artist who helped to create the Pop Art movement. He used different popular imagery in his art, but hearts seemed to be his favorite.

1. This watercolor resist painting uses rubber cement to help make an “artsy” looking background. I started with paper that had 6 hearts already printed on it to make the project move faster. The students are to color each one in with crayons, pressing hard to make them brightly colored.
2. A background watercolor paint is chosen and covered over all the hearts. Let the paint dry. Rubber cement is painted over the entire picture using large quick strokes. The goal is to just make some lines, and leave some empty spaces. Let the cement dry.
3. A contrasting watercolor paint is chosen and painted over the entire picture. The cement will keep the background color intact. Let the paint dry.
4. To add definition more oil pastels may be used again on top. Tell the students that the goal is to have colorful, bold hearts that stand out from the background. When they think that is achieved, their art is done!

Homemade Valentine Card

If you can get your hands on some fancy colored paper, this simple layout can make a really nice card. I had a sample pad of rice paper from an old scrapbook collection that worked well.
1. I used a white card stock paper that was letter size, and folded it in half to make a 5.5" x 8" card. Random squares and rectangles were cut to fit the paper in a loose grid, and were glued in place. Glue sticks work great so there are no wrinkles from wet glue.
2. With the scraps remaining, I folded them in half to cut hearts that would fit each square or rectangle, i.e. tall skinny heart for a tall skinny box, etc. They are glued in place when they are finished. That’s it – there’s nothing quite like a homemade Valentine card!

Tinted and Shaded Valentine Heart

Layering oil pastels to successfully make smooth gradiations takes practice. This picture was first colored with just a red and blue pastel, and the tinted highlights and gray shadows were added afterwards.
1. I started with a square paper, drew a large heart in the middle, and then used a ruler to draw at least four lines completely across the paper.
2. Using smooth oil pastels, like my favorite Portfolio® brand, I colored in the heart and background with just one color for each. Because of the transparent nature of these pastels, I could still my pencil lines when I was finished.
3. I used the gray pastel to color a shadow over half of each blue background section that had been created. On the opposite side, I used a white pastel to make a tint on the remainder of each section. This process was repeated randomly to all the background sections, and then to all the red sections. I tried to alternate the shadows so that they would often be opposite of tinted edges.

CA Standards of Art: Grade Three, Creative Expression
2.2 Mix and apply tempera paints to create tints, shades, and neutral colors.

Sticker Art Trading Cards

Sometimes kid’s creativity just blows me away. I brought round colored stickers to my Art Trading Card class today, thinking that everyone could make art with just circles. Then one very clever boy started cutting up the stickers to make these amazing cards, including this tiger and electric guitar.
1. I passed out 2.5" x 3.5" white cards, sheets of .75" colored stickers, and thin markers to each student. They were to use their imagination to see how many different things they could make with circles, i.e. flowers, balloons, vehicles, etc.
2. When complete, each card got a plastic trading card sleeve, which cost about a penny each.
Thanks to Luc, a talented 1st grader, for letting me share his trading card art.

Paper Mache Valentine Heart Box

A little experimentation took place before I did this project with my after school mache class. I used modeling clay to first form these Valentine heart boxes. If you can buy the clay at a ceramic supply store, it can be pretty inexpensive.

1. I gave each student a chunk of clay to form a ball to shape into a plump, round heart which they wrapped in plastic wrap being careful not to alter the shape.
2. The students covered the hearts with at least two layers of paper mache. The hearts were left to dry thoroughly over several days.

3. In the second class I used a utility knife to cut around the outside edge of each heart. The kids had fun opening up the heart and removing the plastic wrapped clay. They then painted all surfaces with acrylic paint.
4. During the last session the students coated all surfaces with Mod Podge, and some sprinkled on a little glitter for that extra sparkle.