Project #4 Collage Illustration

For this project, we learned about the author and illustrator, Eric Carle. He writes children’s books and uses painting, cutting, and pasting to create his pictures. He will paint a blank piece of paper many different colors and textures. He will then take his picture that he originally drafted and cut the shapes out to trace out of the colors. It was really neat to see and I never expected that to be the way of his drawings. I have always loved Eric Carle’s books and I thought the pictures were particular when it came to the shapes of the objects. For the project, we were able to paint our own papers and use them to cut our shapes out of. I decided to create one of my favorite sceneries in the summertime. I created a collage of a sunset and a slough where there are many fireflies. In the summertime, it is very common to find fireflies by the slough that is a ½ mile away from my home, so I enjoy riding my bike to go see them. I painted an orange paper to show a sunset and I also painted a green paper to show grass for cattails. I chose to place a quote on my picture and it says “Let your personality Shine, to Light your own Path”. I meant for this to mean that everyone is different, even fireflies. Everyone has something different to offer and should be proud of what they have and can give to the world.

For an extension activity, I would have my students create a class story. I would introduce Eric Carle to the class and show them his techniques of creating a collage. I would have the students create their pages of color and textures to show an individual page to use in the collage for our class story, similar to the project we did in class. We would decide on a story, and each student would be responsible for writing a page in the book. It would have to be in the correct order with everyone else’s pages of the book so that the story would go in the right order. This would be a great way for the students to create a book and have a class project.