An Eric Carle Inspired Project

       Today I thought I would take a break from the regularly scheduled Holiday post and bring part two of my three part series on art for kids- if you follow me here you may remember that I was a Visiting Artist at Opus Framing and Art Supplies where I presented three projects to help get kids beyond crayons and paper artistically.

      We are big fans of reading around these parts- I am a huge lover of kids books- I love the art as well as the stories. One of our favourite artists is Eric Carle of Very Hungry Caterpillar fame! While avoiding the dishes one night I stumbled upon this lovely Pin on Pinterest- Eric Carle Inspired Art Lessons- yes please!

  Step 1: Our Eric Carle inspired project took several different forms but essentially this is what we did for two fun, art filled afternoons! Day one we took several sheets of watercolour paper and just had fun painting and experimenting with colour- I talked about it on this post here. We set those aside to dry as the thick watercolour paper had absorbed a fair amount of water.

Step 2:  The second part of this project entails layering up several layers of tissue paper- creating texture and depth. The Boy decided her wanted to do an Eric Carle style bear and so I roughly drew it out for him on top of the watercolour painting- he then just started working with in those lines adding the tissue scraps in. Miss Lo went a bit more free form and just stated collaging all over her paper- no problem we will take care of this in step three!

      Ever the environmentalist I have boxes of tissue paper saved from birthdays and Christmas- even if there was a craft supply shortage I would not need to but coloured tissue- however if you need to any dollar store or craft store sells it. Just cut into small squares or tear if you want a more organic effect. We used Stevenson Acrylic Medium for the "glue"- essentially you will take a piece of tissue- brush some acrylic medium on the back- place the tissue onto your art and brush a bit more acrylic medium over top to seal it.

 Step 3: Now back to Miss Lo's art piece- she decided to be a bit more free form and collage tissue paper all over her watercolour painting. This works out perfectly- we just let that sheet of paper with all it's textured goodness dry thoroughly. Then using a template made by me Miss Lo traced her preferred shapes ( a dragon fly) out. At this point if the child is old enough they can cut the shapes out themselves- if not an adult can do the heavy lifting and by that I mean cut it out.

    Once you have all your shapes cut out of the collaged watercolour paper lay them out on a fresh sheet and glue down. We finished off Miss Lo's piece by adding a green backdrop for our Dragonfly to frolic on.

    Miss Lo was being a bit shy and so big brother stepped in to show off her finished piece. I find that kids really respond to simple supplies- so this is a great project to sort of spend a few quiet hours just painting and watching what the colours do- how they blend together. If you have any Eric Carle books you can round out this afternoon with a story helping to connect the art to the story- my personal favourite is The Grouchy Ladybug!