This geometric heart painting is inspired by stained glass. Watercolor paints and black glue make this multimedia project bright and beautiful!
Supplies for this geometric heart painting…
The star of this project is black glue. The black glue doesn’t serve as an adhesive at all but rather serves as a drawing tools that resists the watercolor paint. Check out this post on black glue to see how to whip up your own bottle of black glue.
You’ll need somewhat sturdy paper to handle the glue and the moisture of the watercolor. Student grade watercolor paper is ideal but card stock is a reasonable substitute.
The color is thanks to watercolor paints. These watercolor paints are my favorite- they’re so brilliant and have so many beautiful colors. If you’re looking for a student grade watercolor I love these Crayola paints!
How to draw a geometric heart…
Start by discussing the basic heart shape. It’s symmetrical so whatever your kiddos draw on one side they’ll need to repeat the mirror image of that shape on the other side of the heart.
A heart is generally curved but for this stained glass inspired project each curved edge is going to be replaced with a flat line. That means lots of short straight lines will replace the smooth outline of the heart.
Encourage your kiddos to draw the outline of their geometric heart big, big enough to fill the page! Draw lightly, with pencil. (My lines are drawn with Sharpie for the purposes of showing you all my drawings a little more clearly!)
How to add dimension to a geometric heart…
Once the jagged outline of the heart is complete it’s time to add some dimension to the inside of the heart- think facets of a diamond. There’s no one right way to divide up the interior space. You can either set your kiddos free with a pencil and ruler and allow them to imagine how those different facets might meet up or work together, starting from a center point.
While drawing more facets will make the geometric heart more interesting too many lines too close together will make it difficult to outline the lines with black glue.
Using a ruler, continue those facet lines from the edge of the geometric heart off the edge of the paper. Dividing up the background will allow a greater number of spaces to be filled with colors!
Creating the stained glass effect with black glue…
Before beginning to outline your heart experiment with the bottle of black glue on a scrap paper to find the sweet spot for how open the glue nozzle should be to get that smooth line. Practice drawing lines with the nozzle never touching the paper but hovering just above it.
Once you’re comfortable it’s time to outline each of those lines in the heart drawing with the black glue. I suggest starting toward the center and working outwards. This makes it less likely for a hand to land in the wet glue.
When all lines have been traced with glue remember that these drawings will need to lay flat to dry. Most traditional drying racks tilt paintings which, in this case, would result in a puddle of glue!
Choosing a color scheme for your heart painting….
This is a great opportunity to let your kids choose a color scheme of their own or come up with one together. In the example below I’ve used cool colors to paint the heart itself and warm colors to paint the background. I think this really makes the heart shape “pop” from the background.
I considered doing tints and shades of one color for the heart and different values of another color for the background. There’s no wrong answer to choosing a color scheme but it is worth putting a little thought into before beginning to paint!
Painting your heart…
I love combining black glue and watercolors. Watercolors tend to run into each other and can sometimes get muddy. The dry lines of glue create a “fence” that keeps the watercolor paint wherever your student puts it.
The glue outlines provide the perfect opportunity for placing contrasting colors next to one another- with no fear of getting muddy, mixed colors. Colors will stay clear and bright and where you put them!
Other projects that feature glue in a starring role….
This chalk leaf drawing features glue outlines.
Draw a spiderweb with glue.
Use paper snowflakes as stencils for this snowflake chalk drawing.
