Independent Project Artists

In my Art Major 4 class, the third term is dedicated to doing an individual project inspired by an artist. These vary from painting, print making, collaging and more. I discussed my CAPS project with my art teacher and she is letting me work on my illustrations in both class and my fourth term. I am thrilled to have her expertise and advice through this project!

My artists that I have chosen are Oliver Jeffers and Eric Carle. Oliver Jeffers is a talented artist and illustrator. He illustrated the books "The Day The Crayons Quit", "The Moose Belongs With Me", and many others. I love his style because the characters have a sweet likability and do not enforce many stereotypes such as skin color and body shape. What I want to do is create similar characters with the same likability and easy recognition, but individualizing mine a little more with different body shapes and races. I know I cannot illustrate every single individual, but my goal is to try to reach as many children as possible. I want to illustrate differences, and spreading the message that beauty is neither singular nor solely based on exterior.

My second artist is Eric Carle. Carle is extremely well known for his book "The Very Hungry Caterpillar", but also many others such as "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" and "The Tiny Seed". I will use his famous decoupage style, using uniquely painted and pattered tissue paper that I create myself to cut out for my illustrations. I think that the interesting patterns speak very strongly to the idea that beauty is not simple and clean-cut. If a character has patterned and spotted skin instead of smooth painted perfection, it communicates that no skin color is perfect- each is diverse in it's own way. Nothing is black and white- there are a million in-betweens that deserve a place in the world of literature.