The wonderful illustrator Eric Carle passed away this week, and I’ve been thinking about all the ways he inspired me. Reading the Very Hungry Caterpillar is one of my earliest memories - I loved the colours, the holes in the paper, and the surprise ending. Along with Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, it was the book that made me want to become an illustrator…
There’s an animated version you can watch here.
When I was looking for a way to use collage as a technique for an illustration project, I watched a video of Eric explaining how he worked. I love his rough textures and bright colours and how he used simple cutting and super advanced glueing in his pictures, and he added colour pencil details.
I experimented with his style, and moved away from the fragile tissue paper he preferred and used thick paper for my collage illustrations for the River Cottage much more veg cookbook. I wanted shadows on my images, to show depth, and so that you could see the physical layers of the paper. I chose an opaque look, over Eric’s transparent layering, but tried to capture some of his movement and texture in the paint and pencil marks.
I will forever be grateful for how Eric Carle changed children’s books, and for how he inspired me personally.
Thank you Mr Carle, for making the world a more beautiful place. RIP.