What's in your Heart?: Getting to Know You via Tattoo

Chiara Bautista's work

What's in your Heart? Really?
Yes, really. One of the biggest issues for me when I work with a new group of kids is names. I want to be able to learn my students' names faster but I also want to know them - know what their passions and interests are. I think I will be a stronger teacher if I learn to get to know my students and what they care about. Personality is a huge part of my teaching - personality of both the students and myself. Honestly I want to do this project myself -  on a lighter note - I plan on developing a selection of samples that feature my great love, pizza, and an addition of dragon scales which are what cover my mushy insides.. friends and family know this to be true. I have other ideas and I will post my results when I have some time to actually work on them!

Objectives

• View and discuss work of contemporary illustrator Chiara Bautista
• View anatomical studies of the human heart
• Work from reference images/objects
• Create well-rendered drawings
• Incorporate humor and personality into final piece

 

Key Concepts

• The heart is a common symbol in our culture
• The heart is associated with passion, love, life
• What we are interested in can become a part of us, our personality, and how we present ourselves to others

 

Essential Questions for Lesson

• How do the things we love influence who we are?
• How can we be identified by our interests? Is that a good or bad thing?
• How big a part of us are the interests we have? Are they communicated outwardly or do we have other ways we view ourselves?

Lesson Plan

What's in your Heart?

Visual Culture: What associations do we make with images of the heart? As part of an inspiration board we will individually seek out images of the heart used in advertising, television, tattoos, iconography etc. We will discuss how the heart is used as a symbol of love, passion, caring, and life. We will also discuss the historical significance of the heart as an organ in different cultures.  

Example: "The Egyptians believe the heart, or the ieb, is the center of life and morality. Egyptian mythology states that after death, your heart is taken to the Hall of Maat, the goddess of justice. There your heart is weighed against the Feather of Maat. If your heart is lighter than the Feather, you join Osiris in the afterlife. If you fail the test on the scales, then the demon Ammut eats your heart, and your soul vanishes from existence." 

Example: "The image of the heart becomes very important in Christian theology. The Sacred Heart, which is usually seen emitting ethereal light and suffering from wounds, is seen as a symbol for Jesus Christ and his love. Devotion to the Sacred Heart reaches a high point in the Middle Ages, where it is seen in works of art and is mentioned constantly in prayers and doctrine. It remains an icon even today."

Symbols and significance

How big a part of us are the interests we have? Are they communicated outwardly or do we have other ways we view ourselves?: Consider illustrations by Chiara Bautista and how the artist has created her own language of symbology. Think about the use of different natural and man-made elements she incorporates into her work and how they communicate with the viewer. You are required to depict 2-5 areas of interest/personal symbols/images in addition to drawing a framework of the human heart as a base image.

Identity: How do the things we love influence who we are? Write a list of the activities you love most. Think about ways people describe you to others, conversely think about ways you may describe yourself to others. Examples: reading - books, working on cars - pistons or exhaust, riding horses - items of tack for riding, hiking - mountains or trees... you get the picture. You can use different reference objects/images for each image if you choose. Quality of the image will be judged based on the attention paid to detail, rendering, and time spent overall.

  

Artists and Resources

Chiara Bautista Artist Facebook Page 

(Also do Google image searches for her work...)

Timeline: Heart in History 

Gather
Gather objects associated with your passions, interests, or hobbies. Do observational drawings of your objects - study them closely - notice their details, textures, shapes, and scale. Brainstorm ideas about ways you can incorporate your objects into the preexisting structure of the heart. Think about the function of your objects, if applicable.
Enlarge and Engage
Students will transfer their drawings onto standard drawing paper. After creating the framework for their compositions, students will begin drawing, rendering, and filling in with hue structures. Students should keep in mind the use of color scheme, texture, arrangement, etc..
Elaborate
Students are required to create a statement about their work. Conversely, if they have somehow incorporated text into their drawings, that would also be accepted as a statement.

Moving Forward...
I am really excited to see the results of this lesson plan when I work on it with HS/MS kids. They have some great ideas for how to combine and reinvent existing objects. This lesson could also be adapted into a printmaking project or even screen printing. I would easily be able to modify this project for younger students by decreasing the amount of objects/alterations, simplifying the framework of the heart by using a less complex rendering or even a template, and incorporating writing more by requiring a statement or text. I would probably only require one image because it would also take them a bit longer to complete their drawings... 
Either way, I am eager to create my own samples and hope to showcase this lesson during student teaching in the fall :)

Until next time,

Ms. Kanak