Project # 1 - Re-Introducing The Inner Child

For the past 2 weeks, since I finished the 12 techniques warm-up we have been working on our 1st assignment.  Our teacher introduced the assignment by going off about children's books, and how you can find alot of great artwork within them.  He brought in a few examples and one of the artist/authors that caught my attention was Eric Carle.  Check him out at his official website here.

 

"The Very Hungry Caterpillar" sounds like my kinda book I'd read growing up, given my insatiable appetite of food, mind you, I never did read it tho.  This is one of Eric Carle's classics.  Besides being educational and filled with positive messages, the artwork he uses is very distinctive throughout all of his books.  He uses collage techniques, and cuts paper that he has doused with various forms of the 12 techniques we practiced.  Check out that seahorse!!  Not Only do I love the colors in it, but it's cool to be able to recognize the blending technique used and how some colors overlap others.  This guy has made millions just by playing with paint and cutting out shapes.  Work It Out Eric!

So our 1st project of course is pretty much going in line with this style of art and using the techniques we practiced to create a piece.  Cutting required!  Here are some explanations and some pix of my progress.  I just take snapshots from my Drrrroooiiddd camera phone, so forgive the quality of the pics, I'll try to enhance em at some point.

For my project I'm doing a lady bug perched on grass with a pasture and mountains in the background.  I'v been feeling kinda lucky lately, which is why I think ladybug was the 1st thing that came to mind as the main attraction of the piece.  However, the ladybug will be the last thing I work on.  

So this is where my orderly, logical left side comes into play, hehe.  I gotta plan this stuff out of course!!!  I knew I wanted to set the background 1st, so I blended blue and purple with a saturated waterbase to get the sky effect going, and just made a solid green for the bottom half, which is gonna be grass n' stuff.  I also crumpled a bunch of paper and then painted a grey mix over it which would create a perfect snow capped mountain effect that sits in the background.  I also painted a huge sheet of paper with a blend of greens....dark, light, overlapping, which I'll be cutting out at some point for the blades of grass.  I ended up folding the grey crumpled paper and tested out my mountains which worked out great!  Cut em out' and plastered them into place.  I added yellow for the pasture below the mountains.  How I'm gonna work that into play, I still have yet to come up with.  But wish me luck, and I'll be sure to be post further progress and final outcome!