Eric Carle

My next artist is one whose art I have been familiar with since I was young. Eric Carle is the man behind the illustrations of such books like The Very Hungry Caterpillar and The Very Quiet Cricket. I LOVED these books when I was a kid, and I'm sure that love is shared by many others.

 His illustrations are so different than the typical illustrations. There's texture. Even if the book pages are flat with no variation in the literal texture, you can tell that the original pieces had that texture. There's variation in the coloring and shapes that makes up the creatures and subject matter in the pictures.

 The forms of the creatures that are created are of course not photo-realistic, but they are easily identifiable. They also give the characters in the books personality. They make them unique, as opposed to a generic bear, caterpillar, etc. I believe this helps in bringing to life the story character and its own, individual personality.

The cool thing about his art is that he uses and paints tissue paper for his images. Again, like a collage style-- painting the tissue paper, then gluing the different pieces down to make up the bodies of the characters. I find that very charming-- the process and look of the finished product. I'm probably gonna give it a try in the near future... :)

Check out this video of how he makes his characters!

http://www.eric-carle.com/slideshow_collage.html

http://www.eric-carle.com/home.html

http://www.ericcarleblog.blogspot.com/  <-- here's also his blog you can check out!

-Maria