Project #38 Jim Dine Hearts

Jim Dine is an American artist who is mostly known for his drawings, paintings and printmaking. 

Dine has created variations on a variety of motifs:  hearts, tools, bathrobes, the Venus de Milo and others. His 2 dimensional artwork is often loaded with implied texture or noise. His sculptures, like the heart below, have textural surfaces. 

Look carefully at the pictured heart artworks. Noise is the specks, scratches and marks used to create implied texture and detail in a 2-dimensional artwork. 

The blue heart sculpture is covered with relief tools, shoes and Pinocchio figures. How many of the objects on the heart can you identify? 

Try making some heart themed paintings of your own with a variety of techniques and textural surfaces. The last three artworks are student artworks.  The students used simple but effective techniques, applying paint with stencils, stamps, brushes and cardboard spatulas.  

To make a sculptural heart similar to the blue heart sculpture below, see Project #41.  You can create your own heart form or use a Valentine's Day heart shaped box.  Cover with plaster or paper mache and small plastic toys. 

Student examples below. 

The background painted and printed using a found object. The heart painted red, small plastic toy animals used as stencils and sprayed with acrylic spray. 

The background painted and stamped with stoppers and corks. The heart is painted with brushes.

The background and heart are painted using a piece of cardboard as a spatula.