Eric Carle Inspired Collage

This project was inspired by Eric Carle. In class, we watched a video about Eric Carle and how he makes his illustrations.  For this project, we were told to illustrate our own page for a children's book.  My page for the children's book says, The pink fish was all alone in the deep blue sea.

Before thinking about what I was going to illustrate, I made two pages of color for my page.  I started with a pink design as one page and made a blue design for my next page. I then drew my illustration and cut each part out.  I then traced the pieces I needed onto my colored paper.  For example, I used my pink paper and traced the fish and then cut it out.  I did this for each piece you see in the illustration. I then put all of the pieces together on my blue background for my finished illustration.

For an extension activity in the classroom, I would use this type of collage illustration at the beginning of the school year when we are all coming back from summer break and we want to find out what everyone did over summer.  The students would do much of the same as I did, but instead they would illustrate one highlight of their summer vacation.  We would then hang their illustrations in the classroom or out in the hallway for display.