Collage in the style of Lauren Child

Out & About!

Photomontage incorporates photographic images and pictures from print media into artwork. Lauren Child uses mixed media such as collage, magazine cuttings, watercolours, photography to create her modern illustrations. Her books include Charlie & Lola, the Clarice Bean novels, and Whose Afraid of the Big Bad Book?



Activity: 'Out and About' Collage.

Resources: 

magazines, assorted textured paper (you can buy packs of these from the dollar shop), scissors, glue, tracing paper or baking paper, pencil, eraser, black pen

What to do:
1)Get your textured paper out and have a look through it. Cut out lots of different photos of textures from magazines (carpet, grass, wood, fabric, sand, brick etc). Cut out a selection of hair, noses and eyes and anything interesting that catches your eye... 

textured paper

bits and pieces from magazines

2) Decide what kind of scene you want to make. A street, a garden, a park, a beach? Make a background by choosing appropriate coloured and textured paper and glueing it together. Add bushes or a road etc.



3) Choose some hair and place tracing paper or baking paper over it. Using a pencil, draw the shape of a face and neck onto the tracing paper.

3.

4) Turn the tracing over and trace over the lines on the back of the tracing.

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5) Turn the tracing back over, put it on paper that you want to use for the face and rub pencil over the lines. This will give you the face. Cut it out and glue the hair on. 

5.

6)Glue on and draw facial features. Here I drew the eyes and glued a mouth and nose that I had cut out. Use tracing paper for a guide to cut out the clothes from your magazine cut outs. 

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7) Gradually build up your picture using the tracing, cutting and sticking techniques!

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This activity can be adapted for all ages. Younger children can be given shapes already cut out to assemble and stick themselves and older kids can work independently.

Keep all your left over pictures in a folder to use for more collage work!

Inspiration for this activity: The Usborne Book of Art Projects


























Info on Collage Illustrators: http://hearthomemag.co.uk/blog/artist-spotlight-4-of-the-best-collage-illustrators/

Pippi Longstocking - Lauren Child

Little Red Riding Hood

Hi everyone! It's great to be creating stuff again after a long holiday back to the UK! Here is an activity that you can adapt for any book...


Activity:  Little Red Riding Hood matchbox characters

Resources: 2 boxes empty boxes of safety matches, 4 matches (struck and blown out, get an adult to do this), colourful paper for the background, paper for the characters, scissors, paint (I used watercolour), blue tac, glue, black fine liner pen.


* Like many of my activities, this one is for younger kids with adult support and for older kids with no support (apart from striking the matches and blowing them out.)

What to do: 
 1) Choose a background paper and draw around a matchbox onto it.

2) Cut it out and stick it onto one face of your matchbox. Next draw around your match box again to make a box in which to draw your character.

 3) Draw a character in the box. It doesn't matter if it overlaps a side or two, it's actually better if it does.

 4) Paint your characters carefully.

 5) Use blue tac to stick the matchstick legs into the box.

6) When your character is dry, outline in with a black fine liner. Then cut it out and stick it on with the bottom slightly overlapping the bottom on the box. (I added a frilly skirt using another piece of paper). Now Put the matchbox together and...Voila!

Tip: Have a go at making different characters from your favourite stories! You could even make a setting for your story from a shoe box, using the same technique.