Collaging Inspired by Eric Carle

Since I'm an ECE major, it's no surprise that I'm a big fan of Eric Carle's work. I love his art style and I recently had the exciting opportunity to watch a live interview showing his process in an ECE course. My class was then tasked with creating an Eric Carle style collage.

While I do not have the sophisticated tools or experience that he has, I'm very satisfied with my process and the results.

Essentially, Eric Carle makes many, many different sheets of painted papers. He'll miss colors to his satisfaction and try new ways of manipulating his tools to create different prints. Then he'll be given an idea or commission and draw a sketch. From the sketch, he'll pick from his giant stash of pre-made papers until he's satisfied. He then places the sketch over the colored paper and using an xacto knife, cuts out his paper using the sketch as a guide. Placing the sketch over his base sheet, he'll use the hole in the sketch as a guide for placing (and gluing) the piece he's cut out. Rinse. Repeat. Voila!

You can watch a video that shows some of his process here. It's incredibly impressive to me.

I used a lot of his process but modified it to fit my class needs. I changed his process by deciding what I wanted to represent before designing the painted pages I would cut from. I decided to make a collage of my three cats.

I started with free-handing a sketch (from memory) of the three. Yeah, it's pretty ugly.

Then I scanned the sketch and sent it to my computer. Using my very expensive and sophisticated Microsoft Paint, I cleaned up the sketch.

This is how it looked when I printed it out.

From the sketch, I was able to decide what colors I wanted in my picture and plan accordingly.

Rather than use the xacto knife assembly, I pre-cut every piece out separately and traced them onto the back of my papers. I then cut those pieces out (obviously I really should invest in an xacto knife to kill time) and assembled them on the base paper before gluing down.

After gluing, I used pastel chalk to draw their faces and limbs. This is where I ended up.

I love it. Love. It's framed (frame has changed since the taking of this picture) and happily living in my dressing room now although location is subject to change. Altogether, I probably spent 4-5 hours on this from start (sketch) to finish (framed).

My sister requested I do her dogs as a birthday gift to her. Her wish was my command.

Here are the dogs:

K

and B (Isn't my nephew the cutest?)

I didn't save a copy of the sketch (doh!), but here it is placed nearby the painted sheets I made.

And here's the sketch next to the nearly finished collage.

A close-up of the collage minus finishing details.

And framed conclusion next to the cleaned-up sketch. I didn't use pastel chalk for her finishing details but rather a sharpie. I only had a thick felt tip and had to get creative which is why the lines aren't always clean.

Collectively, I probably spent about 4-6 hours on this. Maybe an xacto knife should go on my wishlist? She loved it or she's a really good actress.

Now I'm getting some pressure from another sibling and my mother to do their respective pets. It's something I've enjoyed doing both times so it might be in my near future again. There's a specific memory of two passed pets that I'm thinking to bring to collage life  We'll see.