Jim Dine Pop Art Hearts

I do this project with 1st grade every year right around Valentine's Day. I had a couple of classes use liquid watercolors to paint over oil pastel drawings. But, this year we have some particular difficult 1st graders, so I simplified this for some other classes to oil pastel only. They turned out very vibrant and lovely! 

Jim Dine

Jim Dine Pop Art Hearts!

Well, I've been sick all week but I have managed to squeeze out a deepspacesparkle.com inspired project about Jim Dine the pop artist. I've been doing this with Kinders and 1st grade and I am so impressed at their abstract expressionism! I wish I had more projects that allowed for this kind of freedom within the bounds of the project.

Step One: Trace a heart with a pencil on white drawing paper. I cut the paper to 12"x12" squares. And I precut about 20 hearts of different sizes and spread them out on their tables.

If they don't get the heart perfect, no worries. It looks more hand-drawn that way which is always better.

Step Two:  Outline your heart or hearts and start adding your own designs, colors or patterns. Be creative! I also showed several images of Jim Dine's heart before beginning the project for inspiration.

We used oil pastels because they are painting with liquid watercolors.

They could color in as much as they wanted....leaving a little white paper peeking through is good for the next step though.

Step Three: Paint all the white space left with liquid watercolors.