Wednesday Works - Jim Dine Hearts with 4th grade

With Valentine's Day approaching, I asked my 4th grade class what kind of project they might be interested in working on next.   I received a few answers at once, "hearts!"  "Painting!"  "Something messy"

To go along with our goal of 5 new lessons in each grade level, I took their requests and did a little research into Jim Dine, an American Artist, at times associated with the Pop-Art movement but only because of his focus on everyday items. 

We looked at his group of paintings and prints that had a heart for a main focus.   Without making the artworks be "valentines" as such, I introduced several steps of layering different materials to try and create some depth in these little works.  

Our first step was colored paper.   Students could choose to work on their heart feature as a positive or negative space element.

 Either filling in the background areas around the heart....

 

Or working with the heart as a positive space.

The goal here was not so much in the colors they chose, but in the texture they were trying to create as a base layer.

For an additional element before painting began, students were instructed to use crayons, colored pencils, and both washable and permanent markers to bring out different parts of their project.   They weren't sure what would happen when we painted over marker or colored pencils, but they do know about wax-resist using crayons and paint from a previous lesson. 

Then the painting.   My kids and I are really happy with using the tempera cake paints this year.  That is definitely something we will be using again next year.

After these have a chance to dry, we'll look at them one more time to see if we need to pull out some detail with colored pencils or markers but I am very happy with the results so far!