Eric Carle Art project

Eric Carle books are favourites in our household. I never thought the art work in them was that impressive though. However, on a trip to the Du Page Children's museum, we created a piece of art work based loosely on Eric Carle's style of illustrations. A Fire truck.

I found out about his processes and became quite fascinated, so much so we completed the process at home.

Very simply, Eric Carle paints layers of differing colour on top of each other, letting each layer dry before adding the next. After that he draws an outline of the illustration. Then he cuts out shapes from the previously painted paper and adds them to create a design such as the Hungry Caterpillar.

If you want to follow the process in the correct order as we did, we discussed the subject that Henry wanted to create. He chose a dinosaur this time. Your choice of subject matter may influence the colour of paints you use to create your painted paper with. Henry just wanted to use every colour however and deal with what it made the dinosaur look like later!

We painted using water colour sponge brushes (the ones that already have paint in that you just dip in water). Rather than paint numerous layers, i just suggested to Henry he use a few different colours. - The paper before it dried.

Once dry, Henry cut the paper into random shaped bits. He loves cutting, and with no lines to follow, and the instruction "cut as many bits as you want" given, he was very enthusiastic about this bit!

Henry then drew the outline of the dinosaur then got sticking. To finish off the masterpiece he drew on the arms and legs with pen.

Henry's take on Eric Carle's art style!