Eric Carle Inspired Mother's Day Portraits

We recently got invited to join A Pop of Culture‘s (https://www.instagram.com/a.pop.of.culture/) weekly theme of Eric Carle inspired projects! I used to love creating Eric Carle inspired art with my class as an educator. After looking at many of his books, we would take a large piece of paper and divide it into sections and then I would put out all sorts of tools, brushes, scrappers etc. to texture the painted areas cut out and collage. The next week in art we would create the images that they wanted on coloured backgrounds. I still have many of their pieces that they wanted me to keep to show the next year’s class- lovely treasures! As Mother’s Day is on its way, we thought this the perfect time to use this technique to create a portrait of someone who fills an important role in your life- whether it be your mother, aunty, grandma, mentor etc. We created a blank label to incorporate anyone or occasion for you to describe what you admire and appreciate about that special person!

Materials

Printable: I love my
Thick paper
Paint (skin tones and various colours for facial features and accessories etc.)
Items to create texture (you could use kitchen utensils, scrape with cardboard pieces, netting, pom poms etc.)
Scissors
Pencil/eraser
Large piece of paper for the background
Glue stick

We always find these items useful too:

Directions

We are going to use this technique to create a Mother’s Day portrait, but as mentioned, you can make any image that you like! Think about your mom, grandma etc. (whomever you are going to make this project for)- what do they look like and what do you appreciate about them? You can sketch them out beforehand and cut out those pieces to use as tracers on your painted paper if you like. For children who require a bit of planning with their pieces, this certainly helps and can always be modified and manipulated as you create.

Create different pieces of painted paper (this is a perfect time to use up scraps from old projects). We often paint the base and then added the appearance of texture on top. So for example, we added a bit of white to our base colour and then dotted the paper with a pencil eraser. You could create texture with sponges, a fork, a funnel- all sorts of things. (Look at our Paper Flower Garden for more ideas: http://make-it-your-own.com/paper-flower-garden/). You could section a large piece of paper off (by folding it into smaller rectangles and then unfolding it) and do this on one large piece of paper if you like. Be sure to create a large piece for your Mother’s face. Our daughter also painted another piece as slightly different tone to create some of the facial features such as the nose. Allow this to dry overnight.

Paint a large sheet of paper for your background. You might want to think about a simple shade or shades for this to balance all of your textured pieces.

When I would do this with my students we would then cut out each rectangle for easier management and then if there were colours or pieces that you didn’t need you could put them in a bin to share.

One tip that really seems to work is to sketch your shape (say for example for the mouth) on the back of your painted paper lightly and then cut it out. This eliminates the pencil lines and allows some children to better visualize the shape rather than free cutting. As mentioned in the first point, some children might benefit from drawing out the entire face and characteristics that they want, cut them out and use them as tracers on the back as well. Think of the needs of your child or group and what might suit them best or perhaps you can present a few of these tips for them to chose from as to what might work to help them create a piece that they are happy with.

Cut out your face (we used a plate to get a circle and then shaped it) and arrange all your features, moving them about until you get your desired look. (It is good to do this before you bring out the glue!). You can use smaller items such as caps for smaller features if you need help creating specific shapes.

Glue your face and features onto the upper portion of your background.

Print out the label for you to fill out. It is handy that there are two per piece as you can use the first one as a rough copy that you could edit and then use the latter for your good copy for display. Once this is done, glue it onto your background. If you like, back your work for display.

Hang your work up for your mom/ special person to see and/ or give it to them on Mother’s Day or any day to show them your appreciation for who they are and what they do!