Hi there, little caterpillars! Today, we’re going to be exploring the colorful creations of Eric Carle, children’s book author and illustrator. You may have munched on some of his famous works like “The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” “The Grouchy Ladybug,” and “The Very Busy Spider.” We’re going to be using these books as inspiration as we create our own art pieces. Whether you’re a seasoned artist or just starting out, we’ve got some tips and tricks to share with you. Grab your paintbrushes and let’s get to work, we can’t wait to see the amazing creations you’ll come up with!
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Creating Eric Carle-Inspired Art: A Step-by-Step Guide
Eric Carle is known for using painted papers in his distinctive collage-style illustrations, which he creates by cutting and layering hand-painted papers to create bold, vibrant, and imaginative artwork.
In addition to colorful papers, you’ll need scissors, a cutting mat, a ruler, and a pen or pencil for drawing.
We made a list of six steps to use when making your Eric Carle-inspired art.
- Create your own painted papers:
If you don’t have any store-bought painted papers, you can create your own by painting a series of papers in various colors and patterns. Use acrylic paints, watercolors, or any other type of paint that you prefer. Allow the paint to dry completely before moving on to the next step. - Choose your colors:
Eric Carle is known for his bold, vibrant colors. Choose a color scheme that you like and that will work well with the theme of your art. - Cut your shapes:
Use your scissors and cutting mat to cut out a variety of shapes and figures from your painted papers. You can use a ruler to help you create straight lines and precise shapes. - Arrange your shapes:
Lay out your cut-out shapes on a flat surface and experiment with different arrangements until you find a composition that you like. Think about how the shapes can interact with one another and create depth and dimension in your art. - Glue your shapes:
Once you have your final arrangement, use glue to adhere the shapes to a piece of paper or canvas. You can use a paintbrush to apply the glue or a glue stick for a neater finish. - Add details:
Use colored pens or pencils to add details to your art. You can draw lines, dots, and other shapes to add texture and interest to your composition.
Step back and admire your work: once you have finished your art, take a step back and admire your creation. You have just created your own unique, Eric Carle-style masterpiece!
Watch on YouTube: How to Make Detailed Eric Carle-style Art with Hand-Painted Paper Featuring Mickey Mouse and Simba
Video Transcript
Today we’ll be creating art in the style of Eric Carle. “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”, “The Grouchy Ladybug”, and the “Very Busy Spider” are some of his most famous works? Eric Carle is known for using hand-painted papers in his distinctive illustration style where he cuts and layers these pieces into bold vibrant and imaginative artwork. In addition to those colorful papers, you’ll also need some scissors, a cutting mat, a ruler, and a pen and pencil for drawing. We’ve made a list of six steps to use when creating your own Eric Carle inspired art. Step one: Create your own painted papers if you don’t have any store-bought painted papers, you can create your own by painting a series of papers in various colors and patterns. Step two: Choose your colors Eric Carle is known for his bold, vibrant colors. Choose a color scheme that you like and that will work well with the theme of your art. Step three: Cut out the shapes Use your scissors and cutting mat to cut out a variety of shapes and figures from your painted papers. Step four: Arrange your shapes Lay out your cut out shapes on a flat surface and experiment with different arrangements until you find a composition that you like. Step five: Glue your shapes down Once you have your final arrangement, use glue to adhere the shapes to a piece of paper or canvas. Finally, step six: Add details use colored pens or pencils to add details to your art You can draw lines, dots, and other shapes to add texture and interest to your composition. Take a step back and admire your work. You’ve just completed your very own Eric Carle style masterpiece. We’re going to get started by making our hand-painted papers. We laid down some paper before getting started because this can make quite a mess. Take this tissue paper that’s meant for wrapping gifts, and we’re going to apply a thin layer of paint. We want to do a bunch of colors we’re looking for a really nice textured paper that we can use for our collage. That is a big piece of paper. Once you’ve painted the pieces, you do not want to let them sit here, they’ll kind of glue to the tabletop. So, you might want to have some kind of clothes line hung up. We’ve got some strings hung around and we’re going to clip these up to let them dry. And don’t worry if it looks all wrinkled once they’re dry…you’re going to just flatten them all together. They’ll all flatten out and you’re gluing it down in the end anyway. Which colors do I want to go for? Do you want to take the warm colors and I’ll stick with kind of the lighter ones. You can do it like 40 different sheets. So what’s the easiest way to paint onto this paper? There’s really not a right way or a wrong way. This feels like chaos to me. Doing some research about Eric Carle… Eric was actually on Mr. Rogers. He actually showed Mr. Rogers what he does to prepare his papers. Oh, cool. He actually used tissue papers…just like this. He got really detailed. He used pieces of carpet to add layers. Oh, wow. Like he’d paint like green down and then he’ll dab some blue paint on a piece of carpet and he’ll make stripes. Wow, that’s cool. For today’s I think we’re just gonna do whatever we feel like. Okay. …and see what happens. Don’t worry about putting paint down on any aluminum foil or anything. Just do a few drops. Oops! I already started. Oh, that’s good. Yeah, just get… get messy. Oh, it looks like a crime scene already. This is actually just gonna be kind of a green to a blue. Or poor paints. We just go at ’em. There we go. I like it, Picasso! [Music] So a few days ago I actually created quite a few different options for us to use. We wanted these to be dry before going into the collages. Oh, this blue one’s cool. This one’s kind of a brown with a black mixed in it looks like. Once it’s dry, you just pull it out, flatten it out, put something heavy on top and they flattened out pretty nicely. Awesome. Here’s another one. It started to break as I was putting it on this string. But it really doesn’t matter because you’re gonna be using little pieces of these. Yeah, so we’re not gonna throw the scraps away we’ll save them for future project. We’re gonna just start with some fresh scissors. Nice. You need scissors to open the scissors. All right, should we go ahead and set aside like the colors that we’re gonna use? So two is going to be choosing your colors and then step three is cutting out your shapes. This is a lot of paper. It took me quite a while to paint all of these. Yeah! So you’ll want to arrange your shapes before you start gluing things down. So do I cut out the shapes first, or what do I do next? You’re choosing your colors, then you cut out your shapes. Okay. And then you arrange your shapes to decide how you want to glue it down. Okay. And then you ultimately glue it down. Okay, awesome. I’ve got some ideas for some cool details. Hopefully, so… I’m hoping it will turn out cool. It’s kind of a neat way to do a collage rather than just using black paper. Like this is just a black tissue paper, but you can see the brushstrokes. The brushstrokes look really cool on this. Can we say what we’re making yet, or do we want to keep it kind of a secret? I’m doing a nod to some cool artwork that I’ve seen before by an artist named Damien Hirst. It’s called Mickey Circles. So I’m going to be cutting out a bunch of circles and gluing those down. In the Lion King, there’s the part where Rafiki draws Simba on the tree. And so I’m kind of going to be replicating that drawing of Simba, but with the collage style of like how it looks when it’s drawn on to the tree. See how it turns out. Definitely gonna look more like it’s from a kid’s book because that’s kind of how these look because it’s the style that Eric Carle did. And it actually looks really cool with all the different textures and the colors. I’m excited to see how it turns out. It’s really cool just seeing the texture lines and the paper. You can make one and make a bunch of color copies. That’s what they do for Eric Carle’s books, right? Yeah. Cause he makes the original and then they make copies and that’s how they make the pages. It kind of feels like a kindergarten project or something you do in elementary school. Cutting circles is a tougher than it looks. Would it be a bad thing to glue down this before I add more to it? I don’t think so. Okay. Yeah, we have a bunch of different glue options. That’s just the regular… I’m gonna go for the regular. So bad thing about this is it is tissue paper, so you will see spots that will come through. So I do think using a glue stick might be the best option. This is scary. Once they go down there’s no going back. I mean, I really could just cut out another shape. But it feels really permanent for some reason. If you don’t like that layer just put another layer on top of it. Look you can see the Mickey kind of coming together. Oh, that looks really cool! It is missing the color for the head. Something I’m noticing as I’m gluing it down is you might get a few little wrinkles here and there. So it kind of adds a texture even though it it may be like oh, it’s ruined because it’s not completely flat. I think it’s okay because it kind of adds to the aesthetic a little bit. [Music] All right, so show and tell time. Here’s my Mickey Mouse. This one is in the style of Damien Hirst’s Mickey Circles. So it’s kind of a… an Eric Carl meets Damien Hirst. Um, really fun! It turned out so cool. I love the textures of the paint, too… on the tissue paper. It looks really cool because you have the cool texture from the paint as well. I’m gonna go with my more simple one first for show and tell. So first, we have our bouquet of balloons. Really simple. You just cut out circles and kind of layer them over the top of each other. They’re kind of translucent, so it actually looks like real balloons and then you just draw the strings at the end. And then you’ve got a bouquet of balloons with the cool texture and really easy to make. I enjoyed making that one. It was really quick! For doing Eric Carl style art, you got to do the caterpillar! It ended up being a lot simpler than I thought it would be. And it turned out so cool, too! The trick on this was not being afraid to overlap. So all those different segments – it’s okay if they’re bigger circles. You just overlap the next one on top of it. I was thinking I’d have to cut out every little segment separately. And that would take forever, so that ended up saving a lot. The other trick was actually folding and layering so that when I cut it was cutting through like six pieces at a time. Then also, the trick is to go back after with the colored pencil and add those little textures. Which you actually used on yours. I did. Yes, and you may have already seen a portion of this… But this is my more demanding project. I did a depiction of Simba with the tissue paper kind of like the drawing that Rafiki does on the tree a little bit. I tried to make it look more like that drawing than the actual character Simba. And then I did the really cool thumb swipe and we’ll probably show that to you… of the paint on his forehead like Rafiki does in the movie. And I liked this project because I was able to combine the painted paper, the colored pencils, and some of the paint too to make a cool hybrid project that totally looks like something inspired by Eric Carle’s work. If you decide to try this out, please let us know about in the comments. We’d love to hear about the different projects you try. If you enjoyed this video, please like and subscribe to our channel and please ring the bell so that way you’ll be notified when we do more videos. This is something I could definitely see us doing later on down the line, so if you enjoyed this video, we might do it again because the possibilities are endless. And by subscribing, you won’t miss that video. Yep. Thanks so much for watching. Thank you. Goodbye!
