Eric Carle for me was the starting point into my investigation. Carle for me is the very epitome of children's book illustration and I wanted to get a better understanding of why and how.
Analysis
Eric Carle's work is minimal in design, he creates his illustrations collaging layers of acrylic, inks, water colour and tissue paper. 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' is without doubt Carle's most famous work. The front cover of the book is crisp and to-the-point. It is minimalistic in design - almost lazy, you're given the books title, author and illustrator and we are introduced immediately to the central character of the story, the caterpillar, from the moment you pick up the book.
The title is clearly eligible against a white background but part of the type is layered over the artwork in an almost inconsiderate fashion as the 'CA' of a CATERPILLAR' is callously placed over the fur on the caterpillar. This reflects the unsophisticated, handmade quality in his work. A quality not out of place for a children's book.
Had the caterpillar been on a coloured background (see above) the front cover of the book becomes too busy and heavy on the eye and you lose the important information. Instead the use of white negative space works better for the intended audience as firstly it's aesthetically pleasing visually and secondly, the type is clearly eligible to read for or to a child.
The colour palette is minimal. Too many colours in one image and it becomes too busy (for Carle's collage style) and the simple nature of his designs are lost. The character design itself is very simple. His vacant big yellow and green eyes are captivating and his little red face inquistive. We are drawn to his face as it contrasts stronlgy against the green body and stark white backgrounds.
The face we know is intended to be rounded but in actual fact the way Carle has cut the shapes out often leaves us with quite hard, straight edges to this circular shape. If it doesn't look perfect it doesn't matter as it all adds to the nature of his work. If they were perfectly shaped they would lose the character of his illustrations.
The simplicity of the caterpillar design changes drastically from cocoon to butterfly. The butterfly wings are a mad splash of colour to conclude the caterpillars journey and story. In the wings of the butterfly are colours from all the things he ate and the face remains recogniseable to us as an audience with the same tonal qualities and eyes.
The face is simple. It's friendly and colourful. The red is bold against both the white background and the green body of the caterpillar. The use of the colour yellow has been chosen for the caterpillar's fur as it gives it a fuzzy glow, the actual 'hairs' are red and blue but the yellow strengthens the feeling of fur behind it. This creates a physical feeling, texture to the character in our imaginations you can imagine how it would feel to touch the caterpillar.
The design of the caterpillar lends itself well to children's book as it has reproducable value to it, children can draw, paint, collage the caterpillar quite easily at home or in the classroom as an activity and it is also easily manufacturable into merchandise, soft toys etc. for the target audience.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar is very colourful and a playful read with interactive pages, folds and counting pages useful as a classroom resource for engaging students. Whilst reading and looking through the book, particularly at his layout for page spreads a quote from Eric Carle's webiste I found earlier became quite poignant.
" One of the important elements in this concept is the use of white
or "negative" space. These uncluttered areas support and enhance the
image. The typeface, too, is important. I use as few typefaces and sizes
as possible. The range of beautiful typefaces available, both old and
new, is almost endless; the choices are personal. "
The effective use of negative space to enhance his illustrations is key, keeping a clean backdrop for the heavily textural and vibrant illustrations enhances the artwork. There appears no obvious thought process in placement of type and it would appear the text works itself around the artwork.
Experiments
For my experiment I've chosen to illustrate my friend Fiona, a fashion student at Glasgow School of Art. I thought Eric Carle's style reflected the nature of Fiona and her practise perfectly.
To begin my experiment I sketched out a rough idea of what I wanted to do, I didn't plan too much in advance as I wanted to allow an organic process to happen whilst collaging together my image.
I then painted several sheets of colour that I could either scan in and digitally collage (see above) or, the method in which I chose to do was to handcraft the collage together. I chose to do it this way as it felt more relevant to Fiona's practise, using scissors and piecing it together by hand.
Intending to feed Carle's unrefined style into my experiment I chose not to draw out any of the shapes in advance and instead go straight into cutting out and piecing the characters together. This gave the overall effect I was looking for and I felt was something you couldn't artificially recreate as well.
After collaging the pieces together I scanned in my images to allow me to experiment digitally with design, composition, sizing and type.
Whilst playing around with type I felt there was too much negative space and went back and digitally created things to play around with and fill space.
These simple object fill some of the negative space and create more of an environment for the story without having a fully illustrated image with a background.
These small changes add more of a dynamic to the pages and they don't distract from the original artwork like a full colour background would. Having experimented with page layouts and type I wanted to design a book cover.
I think for the cover of the book however the minimal design with less elements works better. The title is clear and the few pieces displayed on the cover give us only a hint at what's inside the book, introducing you to Fiona (the main character) and what's it about. This is what a front cover should do, give a taste of what's inside the book.
Following on from these handmade Carle experiments I wanted to explore the process of entirely digital collaging and editing together in a series of experiments.
The basis for these experiments is on my chosen text for my Final Major Project (The Secret Garden).
To begin with the digital experiments I first drew out by hand the shapes I would need to use as templates and scanned them in before layering them above the same painted water colour wash (adjusted hue/saturation for each) in photoshop and digitally cutting them out using the magic wand tool and assembling together the collaged characters (see below).
These experiments I felt captured the style and method of Carle's illustrations better. I found the process simpler to do and allowed for mistakes and to digitally change shapes, size and colour.
To start these experiments I created a simple starting point.
My first two book cover designs are very simple. They're stripped down and minimalistic. The story hasn't started yet but the cover gives a hint at what's inside. Inside the story, the garden begins to bloom and grows, but the cover - the starting point - shows it bare as the character Mary first finds the garden. Thusly, the cover is bare as you first find it.
The next experiment I chose to use the door. This cover introduces you to part of the story but not a character. The colours on this cover are entirely shades of green, this gives the organic feeling of nature and leaves. The story, The Secret Garden, is about a garden so this colour palette for the cover works very well - you instantly think of nature looking at the cover.
I then considered changing the size of the door and adding more ivy leaves. This experiment followed the rule of thirds in this composition.
This cover looked a little too bare so I added some falling leaves to fill the gap between the artwork and the title.
I quite like this cover, it's understated but delivers the message of the book. However, I think for children's illustration that perhaps a character they can associate with is required as this cover is quite grown up for a children's book.
To make the book cover more child orientated I added a character, Mary (the protagonist), to the design. This addition of a character instantly livens the design up and informs you that the story includes a little girl - a relatable character for children.
I then explored with different things Mary could be looking at, another character, the robin for example.
Evaluation: Carle's visual language is to communicate to children. His books and illustrations are colourful and friendly. Looking at his artwork there is a naivity to it and how it is produced that makes me smile, as a child these illustrations are fun to look at and relatable. The stories and illustrations Carle produces are visually stimulating and easy to read to or for children. The book covers and pages are not unapproachable or intimidating to young readers and their vibrancy and simplicity stands them out on the shelf. Carle has cleverly used a method of illustration (collaging) that looks childlike and his effective use of negative space and the relationship between his artwork and type is something I have taken away with me from conducting my series of experiments.
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Bibliography
Artwork/books/quotes
- Carle, E. (1970). The Very Hungry Caterpillar. GB: Hamish Hamilton Ltd.
- http://www.eric-carle.com/generalcopyright.html. Carle, E. The Official Website.
- http://www.eric-carle.com/ECbooks.html#anchor584567. Carle, E. The Official Website: List of Eric's Books.
- http://www.eric-carle.com/world.html. Carle, E. The Official Website: The World of Eric Carle.
- http://shop.carlemuseum.org/. Carle, E. 'Very Hungry Caterpillar Plush Toy'. Illustrated by Eric Carle. The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
- Hodgson Burnett, F. (1910). The Secret Garden.