Overlapping Autumn Tree collage-Eloise Renouf inspiredĮloise Renouf is an artist, designer and illustrator from the UK whose designs adorn fabric and printed textiles for homewares and greeting cards. These are left to dry for the next session. They also did a smaller piece of paper with red, yellow and purple paint in sections. They were instructed not to actually mix the colours, but to double dip to cover their entire paper and then while the paint was wet to use a texture wand or comb to dab or scrape through the wet paint.
Students were given a tray with a dark green, an ‘apple’ green, and white. I then showed them a short video of Carle making making paper, and collaging a butterfly, so they could see his process. We talked about how he might have got the effects of texture. We discussed how they think Eric Carle made the pictures- someone did eventually proffer that he painted paper and then cut and pasted it. We watched an animated version of the story on Youtube, and I also had a copy of the book to look carefully at the pictures. This art lesson is the first part- of course there has to be the cocoon and then the butterfly! The Prep students (first year at Primary school) were working on a theme of “Growth and Change” and the story “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” fits in beautifully. Eric Carle’s children’s books and illustrations are a delight to read to children and also a wonderful inspiration so many art projects- who doesn’t love painted paper collages?