Jim Dine Hearts

I don't deal exclusively with the popular image. I'm more concerned with it as a part of my landscape. Pop Art is only one facet of my work. More than popular images, I'm interested in personal images...

- Jim Dine, quoted in Art News, November 1963

Jim Dine is a well known American Pop Artist, he is a sculptor, painter and graphic artist and has been working for over 50 years! 

Pop Art is an art movement that emerged in the 1950's.   Pop artists incorporate items from everyday life into their work- rope, food, tools, shoes, clothes, advertising and pretty much anything from popular culture. Other famous Pop Artists you may have heard of are Andy Warhol, Claus Oldenburg and Jasper Johns.  Some of Dine's most popular paintings use a repeating heart image.  I thought this would be a perfect artist to introduce the kids to around Valentines Day.

 First, I did a Valentine's card project with Kyle at home.  We looked at and talked about Jim Dine's hearts and then got to work on our own!
I gave him a large piece of watercolor paper and oil pastels which he used to draw lines all over the paper.  Then he did the same thing on 2 hearts I cut out for him with the same watercolor paper.

 Next Kyle used watercolors to paint both the background and the two hearts.  He loves watercolors- we paint with them all the time!!!

 When they were dry we cut the background in half and glued the hearts in the middle of each half and then I wrote Happy Valentines Day in the middle and we gave them to Daddy and Grandma and Grandpa on Valentines Day!

The project I did with my art class kids is similar to what Kyle and I did at home but we used different materials.  I wanted the kids to have a project where they could explore using different tools to manipulate the paint.  So here is what they did:

 First we looked at and talked about Jim Dine's Heart paintings.  And then I introduced them to warm and cool colors- for some of the littler ones this concept might not have made too much sense yet, but this at least exposed them to the concept.
 I gave each child a sheet of card stock paper, a dish of cool color acrylic paints (blue, green and purple), and some "tools" to paint with- a sponge brush, a fork, a square of ribbed cardboard, a little sponge and a milk cap.  Then I demonstrated how to use the tools to move the paint around and then they got started painting their background.

 When the kids were finished with their background I gave them clean tools- four hearts cut out of the card stock and warm color paints (red, orange, yellow and white to make lighter shades) and they used the same technique to paint their hearts.

 Then they glued their hearts to the background.

 This was a really fun project and turned out beautifully!