Jim Dine Heart Art

Jim Dine was part of the Pop Art movement and used hearts as the subject for many of his prints, paintings, and sculptures.  Students created a heart with fractured lines, either on the heart, background, or both.  They used oil pastel and learned how to blend them like paint using tinting and shading.  I really love this project...the kids have a lot of artistic freedom here employing what they have learned this year about color theory and it offers a lot of variations.  I love the handmade look of the hearts as students had to cut out their own stencil to begin. This was for all grade levels.  Some students also did a grid in the background instead of the diagonals. Some had fractured only the background instead of the whole thing by erasing the pencil lines inside the heart, but still tinted and shaded the heart and background fractures.  Very fun! Thank you Kathy Barbro for a jump start on this idea.

This one is still in process...

A new look...

I am working on expanding my blog to have one location for information about the variety of classes I offer.  In addition to teaching weekly in the classroom, I offer watercolor classes once a month.  I will also be doing some summer workshops.  I will be adding further information to these new tabs on the blog soon. Hopefully this will help folks find the information they need.

Pop Art Self Portraits

We studied Andy Warhol pop art as a follow up to our study of Jasper Johns.  Warhol used these amazing colors in his art work that really vibrated together.  This was a perfect opportunity for students in Middle and High School to focus on creating these beautiful pop art self portraits.  They used clear transparencies and a black and white close up photo of themselves.  After tracing it in sharpie, they did a collage with tissue over it with amazing results.  Check these out!

Thanks so much to Jen Devin, a friend and local art teacher, for the great idea!  FYI, I also tried these in various acrylic paints, neon acrylic, and none of them worked as well as the tissue.  The paint was too streaky and looked to transparent and washed out.  Lots of fun and the students really enjoyed this project!