Happy Valen-Lines Day!

LINE: one of my favorite elements of art! For the week before Valentine's Day we experimented with a few art techniques to create our elementary valentines. 

As a spin-off of one of one of the drawings of the famous Pablo Picasso, our K-1 class drew their own bouquets of flowers for the great day of love!

In doing so, we learned how to draw various flowers while implementing the various types of lines! It's amazing how a few lines can make something so beautiful!

Sweet little Ruth and Jessica drew the most colorful assortments!

Joe and Ancel prove that real men draw flowers! Kassie knocked them out of the park as well!

Grades 2-3 began working with a little printmaking! This was a technique I didn't learn until college, and I was so excited to teach them about it. Though true printmaking involves acid and copper plates, foam and scewers were the next best thing :)

Using at least three different types of lines, our students etched the valentines into foam...

A comparison of an engraved plate and the final print.

rolled printing ink across their foam "plate",

David rolling away!

and then pressed the plate onto paper. I love the color contrast and various line combinations the kids came up with!

Here, Lucas uses a rolling pin to transfer the image.

Here, Kaitlin shows off her work!   And we can't ignore the variety of Janeya, Eli, and Jaramiah's art!

You'll never catch Summer or Corinne without a smile! Great color contrast!

For our 4-5 class we used a process that the students were very wary of! This is a resist method. It can be done with various materials but for ours we used oil pastels and acrylic paint. First, the students drew Valentines, again using various contrasting lines. 

Then, they filled in the spaces around the lines with oil pastel. Finally, they covered the entire artwork in black acrylic paint. 

I think they thought I'd lost my marbles a little bit when I started drizzling paint on their valentines. Even so, they LOVED the result. After setting for an hour, we ran the art under warm water and gently rubbed the acrylic paint off the oil pastels, while the paint stayed mostly adhered to the watercolor paper. 

This process produces rough, aged lines that are very uniqued, and complementary to the curve feminine lines found on valentines.

Here is Daniel's beautiful valentine.

Damian's came out very rugged!

And Abby really rose to the occasion with curved lines everywhere!

Overall, I'd consider Valentine's Day art a success!