Art Project Idea: Eric Carle Style Illustrations

I recently had the task of teaching a single art class at my daughter's homeschool co-op.  Being the avid lesson planner I am (its my favorite part of teaching), I WAY overplanned.  I decided the artist I wanted to teach about was Eric Carle.  He has illustrated childhood favorites such as Very Hungry Caterpillar and Brown Bear, Brown Bear.  He completes his work by painting tissue paper and then making a collage with the painted tissue paper.

Step one was to paint the tissue paper.  We used paintbrushes, toys with wheels, rollers to make designs, fingers, anything we could get to put paint on the paper.  Since I knew I would be short on time, we completed some paper at home before bringing it to class so the students would have dry paper to cut.  In the future, I would simply devote an entire class period to the tissue paper decorating.

Once the tissue paper was all painted, we set it aside to dry.  I read the students Brown Bear, Brown Bear to demonstrate a piece of Eric Carle's work.  Then the students decided on an animal to create and made it! I was surprised how little help they needed with this part!