Eric Carle Project

This week we had to create our own picture that would be in a children's book. I chose to do an underwater scene with a sea turtle, coral, fish, and seaweed. To create this picture, we used the same technique Eric Carle does to create his books. First we took 12x18 sheets of paper and painted on them, covering the entire piece of paper. The paint we used had wallpaper paste added to it, and we made our paper damp before we painted. The only paint colors we were given were: red, yellow, blue, white, and black. We had to mix the colors from those to get the color we desired. Also, we could use anything to create texture to our picture. I used my hands to create the blue waves and a stamp to create the texture on the green for the turtle. 

After we finished painting, we sketched what would be our drawing. After the paint was dry, we then began cutting our our pieces. We had to figure out what color we wanted each object to be, then laid our sketch over top, and cut it out using an Xacto knife. This took awhile and a lot of patients because you had to cut each individual piece out and then place it onto the background. 

Once we had all the pieces cut and glued, we had to create a story line for our page. Mine says "Timothy the Turtle quickly swam back home." 

An extension activity you could do with this lesson is an artist study on Eric Carle. You could read all of his books and talk about them. It would be fun to do this around the time of his birthday (like you do with Dr. Seuss). When you do it, you could focus on a specific book, like The Tiny Seed and have the students plant their own seeds. This way you are doing art, reading, and science!  Also, you could use it as a way to talk about texture or just mixing colors and worrying about what you would use them for later.