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.

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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. 

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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