More LOVE

image via turbosquid.com

A few years ago I had my students paint their own version of pop artist Robert Indiana's iconic sculpture 'LOVE' (1970). You can see the previous results HERE. After folding a square piece of paper in half twice to achieve four equal sections, students were asked to sketch in the lettering as best they could. This time I made it an exploration of value, asking students to choose any colour to paint the letters and then to use white and black to create two tints and two shades of their colour for the background. Black marker was used to outline once complete. Obviously I am very late in posting this, but this is a great project to do in time for Valentine's Day.

 

Complementary Colour Woven Hearts

This lesson idea for these woven paper hearts comes from Magic Dragon Magazine. I used this lesson around Valentine's Day as an introduction to weaving textiles and to teach complementary colours to grade 3 and 4.

Origami Heart Paintings

Around Valentine's Day I had my grade two students make origami hearts from some small colourful watercolours they did the week before. Here is the link to some instructions for making a heart. Pretty simple to do and something different to do any time to transform paintings.

 

Heart Shapes

 Our school year begins in February, so I like to begin the year with easy and fun activities to tie in with Valentine's Day. You may have seen this simple print-making technique making the rounds on a few blogs and Pinterest boards. I first saw the idea here at TPcraft.com. My grade ones made this art work for their first art lesson. After discussing how colours can represent different emotions, students chose colours that made them feel happy to paint their page. We then made heart shaped stamps from pieces of cardboard tube and dipped them into red and pink paint. Students then scattered their paintings with hearts.

 

I also made some heart-shaped crayons to give away as prizes for the week. These are very easy to make and great for using up all those useless bits of old crayons and oil pastels. I've been wanting to make these for a while since seeing them here.

Textured Heart Paintings

 

This is a project I did with my Grade 6 students back in February to tie in with Valentine's Day. The inspiration came from this painting by artist and illustrator Donna Downey (found via Nic Hahn on Pinterest (thanks Nic!). Students scrunched a piece of white tissue paper, glued it to their page and painted the textured page in a colour of their choice. Once dry, students rubbed oil pastel in a contrasting colour over their page to pick up the texture of the paper. They then drew and painted a heart and outlined their heart in black oil pastel as well as creating a border. They were then asked to add black and white oil pastel to the heart to create light and shadow and imply a more 3D object. Most students proved to need a lot more practice with this concept, however, I really love the texture and will definitely use this technique again.