Jim Dine Hearts Art Project and Elementary Art Lessons

This Jim Dine Hearts Art Project is part of my kindergarten art curriculum. This simple art project introduces kids to the works of Jim Dine and has them create a mixed-media heart with tissue paper and crayons or markers! It’s perfect for any time of year, but it also make an engaging Valentine’s Day art project for the elementary art classroom.

Famous Artist Series from Kids Art Projects 101

This approach is awesome because it layers art history connections with guided instruction about the elements of art and principles of design. The scripted PowerPoint format can be easily utilized in a variety of settings. In this video I share specific tips and considerations to help you implement the unit with ease.

Watch the video, or read the transcript below if you prefer.

 

~VIDEO TRANSCRIPT~

 

Tips for Teaching the Jim Dine Hearts Art Project in Elementary Art Classes

Hi everyone, I am super excited to present to you the 18th installation in our famous artist series. This one is all about artist Jim Dine. Now the purpose of this video is just to give you an overview of how I set up the unit so that once you started with your kiddos you can hit the ground running. So let’s dive right in.

JIM DINE ART PROJECT SESSION 1

I have this one broken up into three sessions. You’ll notice I would say the majority of my other units are four sessions long. I go both ways sometimes in my own classroom with this one just depending on the pace of the kids.

But as I presented the units for you guys, I organized it into three sessions. So just be mindful of that and if you need to modify it to work for your setting you should be able to.

Digital Storybook

So you’re going to start out with a digital storybook, which is designed to give kids a chance to get exposed to a lot of Jim Dine’s work. And to get used to the idea that Jim Dine really, the bulk of his body of work, the stuff he’s most known for, really has some very simple subject matter.

He loves hearts, he loves bathrobes and he loves tools and he likes to make images of those things over and over and over throughout his entire career. I mean over the span of more than 30 years he kept to revisiting these same subject matters.

But each time he revisited them, he approached them differently, using printmaking techniques, painting techniques, or sculptural techniques. And so the slideshow is ultimately there to sort of give kids that sense of “Okay, here’s the bathrobe again. Here it is again. Here it is again.” He’s just kind of changing it up each time.

He uses that symbol of the bathrobe almost as a vehicle to really allow himself to focus on his technique, so the outcome is pretty cool, and it has gotten him quite a bit of recognition.

So, you’re going to showcase all of that stuff. You will have to take a minute to pull in some of those works, so remember to plan for a second because he’s a living artist.

He (which is so exciting) is the first living artist in our series, but his stuff is copyrighted or copyright protected so we will need to pull the PNG file. You know a copy-paste type of thing from the internet into the slide show and then save it as your own.

Begin Jim Dine Studio Project

After you do the digital storybook, you are going to have kids dive right into the beginning phase of the studio project. And the beginning phase of the studio project is all about making two tissue paper collages.

Now the papers are going to be pretty small. They are, well, here’s one I did. It’s literally this size. This is 6 inches by 6.5 inches and in this particular one you see a lot of different colors of tissue paper.

They’re going to be taking torn tissue paper. This is bleeding tissue paper, which is not essential, but is kind of nice. But they’re going to lay it on the paper and then use a wet paintbrush that’s wet with kind of a watery version of school glue.

So there’s nothing special to that. You literally pour some school glue into a small container, add some water, and just stir it with your brush to get that real milky consistency. Then you have the kids brush the tissue paper and it just sort of binds with the paper.

Then you overlap another piece, and another piece, and another piece, and just keep going. Especially with bleeding tissue paper, you get these gorgeous color blends and transparent layers happening. It’s really beautiful.

What I am suggesting you do (what I typically do with the kids) is that I also use this opportunity to break down a little introduction to warm and cool colors, just for the fun of it.

Jim Dine isn’t actually known for working exclusively with warm and cool colors.

That is something I inserted on top of it just because this whole unit is really more about varying up your techniques, your approaches to art making and mark making. So I thought why not throw a little extra on top?

I have them make one warm-colored collage tissue paper collage and one cool-colored tissue paper collage during that first session. That’s pretty ambitious.

You’re just telling the digital story, showing them his work, and then diving right into this, so if you have your materials prepped and workstations ready to go, it is doable within 40 minutes. But you’ve got to be motivated to make that happen.

So if you feel like you’d rather stretch that out and have them do one, one day, and another one, another day. I’ve tried it a billion different ways but I kind of like the idea of getting in one. This one’s kind of messy, so getting all that kind of sticky stuff done in one session is an approach that I find ideal.

They’re going to need plenty of time to dry. I tend to presort the tissue paper because if you work with really young guys, and you’re trying to conserve as much time as possible.

I presort the tissue paper and almost set it up like two completely different assignments within that first session. Sometimes you can set up two full-on workstations or you can walk it over to the kids table like a tray that has only cool colors on it, get them to do that one, then take it away. Now here’s tray number two with just this whole other set of tissue papers and make another one.

So you’re introducing them to the warm and cool colors, and you’re reinforcing that based on what you’re handing them, but they don’t have to do a lot of selecting and sorting.

If you have really high-level kids, if your kids are on the older side, or they’re just really advanced kids, or you have plenty of time, you can give them a big tray of unsorted tissue paper and have them sort warm from cool and add a whole other layer to it.

You can have them do all the tearing, or if you really want to go super fast, you can grab stacks of tissue paper on a paper cutter and just chop up a bunch. It’s the difference between that real clean edge versus the sort of more organic side. Both look kind of cool, so it’s totally up to you.

That takes you to the end of session one. Then you’re immediately going to put those all on the drying rack.

JIM DINE ART PROJECT SESSION 2

Then in session two, you are going to be encouraging kids to make two extra warm colored designs and two extra cool colored designs.

In total, they have three of each, including their first tissue paper collage, then they would also have two additional warm color designs. With those, I suggest because you’re trying to emphasize the variety of techniques, I give them markers for their warm colors.

There’s no right or wrong answer to this. I included some different samples. And when I say technique, in this particular case, I’m just saying your technique of how you make those marks, the pattern that you put down.

You can encourage and model some different approaches. If you’re really feeling brave and you want to pull out some paint, you could have them paint the warm colors. You’re going to do the same thing with cool colors.

Then to change it up, I have them do their cool colors with crayons. The sky’s the limit. You are ultimately trying to get them to come up with one, two, three total cool colors and then three total warm colors – so the tissue paper plus two drawn ones.

That’s the goal of session two. Again I didn’t throw in any fun facts or story tie-ins right here because I’m trying to maximize that second session.

Working With Hearts

It’s really a lot of studio work so once they have created their two marker-based warm color designs and their two crayon-based cool color designs, then you are going to dive right into having them cut out a heart from those warm colors.

You can use a stencil. I recommend you use stencils. Not because I don’t think they’re capable of drawing a heart, but it’s important that they get it the right scale. I’ve seen, with little guys, especially, when they go freehand, they make them really small. And so, this is part of the resource is just a simple heart shape and it just models the ratio.

If you can see, I built-in the square that is six by six and a half inches. This ratio, I really did make a point to get very comparable to the ratio of Jim Dine’s work. Hearts can be stylized a million different ways, so, I was just being particular about this.

Again, if you wanted to make your own heart stencil without printing this out, that should still be very reasonable.

Print out that heart stencil if you’re going that route and then cut it. Then I would recommend tracing this on tag board 10 times and cutting those all out in advance because ultimately you want everyone to have access to these pretty quickly.

They’re going to take their tissue paper collage. If you wanted to let the kids have access to all the different tissue papers and just forget adding the warm and cool layer into it, you can do that, but I just happen to have this one, dry, so that’s what I wanted to hold it up right now.

You want to, ideally, keep the six and a half inch the taller side, vertical, mainly because that’ll look best with the tracer, but you’re basically going to give this what I call “Hot Dog Folds.” I don’t know if you use that term, but it’s called “Hot Dog Fold” because when you fold it like this, in theory, this is supposed to somehow look like a hot dog bun. So it’s a long fold.

Then you take your stencil and you have them wrap it around. Really, the main thing that they struggle with is figuring out which side to wrap it around. You want the crease of the spine of the heart to align with the spine of the tissue paper on the outside.

A lot of kids want to go like this, and, of course, if they trace that and cut it out they’re going to have a broken heart. So you really want to be particular.

I recommend you have them put it like this and trace it with a pencil, crayon, marker, whatever you want, and then have them show it to you to make sure that they really did do it right. Then they do that on their warm one and their cool one and then they cut it out.

So they’re going to cut the whole thing out, and ultimately, the goal is it’s going to look like that, and it’s going to have a frame that looks like that. And you want to have them keep both of these.

So they’re going to hang on to these. They’re going to do it with both their warm and cool tissue paper collages. Then you’re going to take all of that (everything they made). You’re going to kind of bag it all up into a ziplock bag just to kind of keep it all sorted because it’s a lot of papers per kid at this stage.

Put it all in a ziplock bag. Save it for third session. That’s it for the second session!

Early Finishers

I forgot to mention, at the end of the first and second sessions, I put in a resource that you might want to pre-print and just have available in case you got a couple early finishers. I honestly doubt you’re going to have too many early finishers because this is a lot of work you’re shoving into a short amount of time.

These are the two printables. One has “Jim Dine Just Released His New Wildest Robe Image Yet! What does it look like?” You’re just prompting them to color it in.

They can use crayons, colored pencils, markers, whatever, paint, watercolor paint, whatever you want to make this inspired by Jim Dine.

Then also there’s a heart one and same deal. But, in this one, you’re challenging them to do a unique technique outside and inside the hearts.

Then, yet another one here and another one here. So, there should really culminate in a lot of different patterns, and techniques, and checkerboards, polka dots and maybe pressing heavy, pressing light. I put some other suggestions in there.

Hold the marker with their elbow and try to color it that way! You can let them get goofy with it. Close their eyes and color them. Just have fun with it!

You can pre-print these, have a bunch available, just in case, but you may not end up using too many of them.

JIM DINE ART PROJECT SESSION 3

Bring the Project to a Close

Then, in the third session, you are going to prompt them to experiment with different combinations. Okay, now so see the difference here? I can tell this is really supposed to be like this. It’s such a subtle difference.

I debated, should I change the proportions that I normally use just to make this easier for users, but, then you can if you want to. But, you want that six and a half inch side to be going up rather than across, mainly because you’re doing so many of them. So if you wanted to put them on display you kind of want them to be consistent.

But if they’re not, the difference is so subtle it’s really not that big of a deal. It’s just one of those minor issues. So you want to have them test it out like this. Then they could test it out on this one. They could test it out on this one. Look how camouflage that is. They can test it out on this one.

You basically want to have them playing with the idea that “Wow! These different techniques really change the feeling of my work!” Ultimately, they will end up with four different pairings because of how many frames and hearts they have left over.

You can have fun with this. If you wanted to have them glue these; four of them in a row or four in a tower, or, two and two, or, whatever. I tend to just leave them loose.

They’re using a glue stick after they play with it and kind of explore several options. Have them stand back from it and reflect on which one is catching their eye the most. Then you are going to have them lock it in with a glue stick and commit.

Then right away you’re going to transition to your digital review. I post a bunch of questions in there that are my “Go To” questions.

I put some blank templates in there if you want to customize your review and cater it to whatever direction your discussion may have gone in.

Art Show

Then, after they do the review, they’ll have an art show. The show is so fun because it just is this massive display of hearts, and just a ton of stuff to look at, and they have a lot of fun.

I pose some questions as just suggestions for you to get dialogue going during that art show. If you find them helpful, use them. If you want to change them, feel free.

Self-Assessment

Then I added in a self-assessment. Again, it’s printable but if you are not in a printer friendly scenario, you could just display this digitally and have kids walk through it as a group. I will go through the prompts:

“I used varied materials and techniques to create three warm-colored designs and three cool-color designs.”

“I cut a heart shape out of two of my designs.”

“I explored my options, then glued together four pairs of warm and cool designs.”

“I used my materials carefully and tried my best on this project.”

There’s room for teacher comments at the bottom. If you want to, you could print them out, have kids fill them out, and then send them home to parents when you’re sending all of the work home because it does help explain exactly what the kids were aiming for, gives them something to look at, and offers discussion points once the project is home.

Early Finishers

I threw in one other early finisher at the very end and it is a book suggestion and the title is My Heart is Like a Zoo.

It’s such a cute book. It’s by Michael Hall and in the book, Michael Hall has taken the shape of a heart and used it in all these different ways, directions and stuff, not so much with different techniques, but in different overlapping patterns, to create different animals.

It really appeals the little guys, but even for me, looking at all “How did you do that with a heart? Like, they’re just creative uses of the heart shape to make other art. So, it ties in nicely because Jim Dine was so interested in Hearts.

So that brings us to the end of this unit. I hope you have fun with this one. If you work with Jim Dine in a different way I would love to hear about it!

With my older kids, we totally focus on tools and have them make illustrations of tools and paint brushes and scissors and stuff like that, but for the little guys, I find they get a huge kick out of working with the heart symbol as a nod to Jim Dine’s absolute obsession with that symbol.

It’s a fun one to tie in for Valentine’s Day, or for Kindness Week. While it is always fun to work with a heart shape, you can be strategic about when you introduce this one, if you want to.

Anyway that’s it! If you have any questions, I would love to hear your feedback. If you do pursue this with your kids, and have some pictures to share, I certainly would get a big kick out of seeing what you come up with.

So that’s it. Take care everybody!

 

More About the Jim Dine Art Unit

Introduce children to pop art and famous artworks by Jim Dine in this series of three elementary art lessons. Use the done-for-you digital storybook to look at the works of this famous artist and introduce students to a brief history of Jim Dine and pop art. Then use the digital presentation with step-by-step art project directions to guide young artists as they create a Dine-inspired Hearts using warm and cool colors.

Inside the unit you’ll find a 25-page PDF unit guide full of information and tips for teaching this series of art lessons to students in preschool through grade 2.

The unit is broken down into three 40-minute sessions.

✨You don’t need a lot of background knowledge of the artist or art curriculum, and you don’t have to do any extra research to teach these art lessons. I’ve included all the details here for you to open and go. Think of how much time you’ll save on planning!

For each session there is a guided digital presentation that has already been prepared for you and can be used via Google Slides or PowerPoint. The presentation also introduces and guides you through completion of a studio project and follow-up activity.

The 102-page combined PDF and Google Slides full resource includes:

• An original digital storybook designed to expose students to famous artworks and details about Jim Dine. Curious to know how this works? Click here to watch the narrated storybook to help give you a better idea.
• An introduction to warm and cool colors
• A look at Dine’s wide-ranging techniques
• A step-by-step studio project guide with clear directions, supply lists, and work sample photos
• A digital lesson review
• An art show prompt with guided questions
• A printable self-assessment
• Two printable early finisher drawing activities
• A read aloud early finisher suggestion
• Blank slide templates