Art Camp Week Two: Cut Paper!
Exploring cut paper art in picture book illustrations
Welcome to week two, Summer Art Campers! This week we are exploring the world of…drum roll…cut paper illustrations! Did you know that some picture book illustrators use cut paper pieces to craft characters, build worlds, and showcase stories? They do! Let’s delve into the pages of two fun books to see the liveliness of cut art illustrations.
Read: Backyard Bugs by Jill McDonald AND Waiting for Wings by Lois Ehlert
Backyard Bugs brings readers into an outdoor adventure, into a backyard! This book is part of the Hello World series by Jill McDonald, which takes young readers into everyday aspects of life around them. Backyard Bugs highlights many things a young child might see in their own backyard—spiders, grasshoppers, fireflies, and more!
Waiting for Wings showcases the life cycle of butterflies from eggs to caterpillars to butterflies. Sparse, rhyming text highlights important occurrences, such as cocoons, eating, and flying! The refrain keeps the language fun and predictable for young children to join along.
The art in these books is colorful, lively, and engaging—and it was all done with cut paper! With these books, the author was also the illustrator. Each author/illustrator wrote words that inform and have a catchy cadence, plus they created illustrations from colored paper! Can you imagine the kind of illustrations that could come from paper? Let’s look!
Discuss:
Can you see where the different paper pieces come together to create a flower? A butterfly? It’s hard to tell, isn’t it?
Have you ever seen butterfly eggs? What do they look like to you?
Do you think you have the same bugs in your backyard that we see in Backyard Bugs?
If you were a bug, what bug would you be? Where would you live?
Caterpillars must wait a long time to become butterflies. Is there anything that you are waiting for?
Do: Try one of these camp activities inspired by the book
Snack: Make your own fruit and veggie bugs! Visit Hello, Yummy for directions!
Camp game or activity: Step into your backyard with a camera, a notebook, and/or a magnifying glass. What bugs do you see? Make a list, draw some pictures, or just have fun exploring the world of bugs!
Art play: Try one or more of the cut paper art projects below!
You will need:
A pencil
Scissors
Colored Paper
Measuring spoons from the kitchen
Glue or tape
Activity One: Paper Caterpillar
In both Backyard Bugs and Waiting for Wings, the illustrators use paper pieces to create characters. Let’s create our own caterpillar!
1. Grab one piece of white paper and two pieces of colored paper. I chose green and pink.
2. Use the tablespoon on your measuring spoons (upside down) to trace 5 circles for a caterpillar body, 3 of one color and 2 of another color. Whatever color you use to only make 2 circles for the body, make one circle slightly bigger for the head. (You can freehand this around the tablespoon or use a scooper if you have one. I tried to use a mason jar lid, but it made the head too big!) Then, make two tiny eye circles—you can use 1/8 tsp to trace! Finally, draw 2 skinny rectangles for the antennae.
3. Once you have all your circles and rectangles, cut them out.
4. Take your 5 circles for the body and fold them in half. Alternate colors, starting with the color you chose for your 3 circles. Glue (or tape) the edge of one half-circle to the edge of another half-circle of a different color.
5. Next, draw some eyeballs or eyelashes on your white circles. Glue them to your biggest circle for eyes. Take your antennae pieces and glue them on the back side of the head. Fold the tops of the antennae down. Draw a smile to complete a face. Glue this head to your caterpillar body.
You’ve made a cut paper caterpillar!
If you want to take your caterpillar and make him or her into a book or a card, glue or tape the caterpillar on a piece of paper. You’ve made a page, just like an illustrator! Maybe you can write a story to go along with your illustration.
Activity Two: Cut Paper Butterfly
Did you notice that the illustrators of these books used different colored papers to create bugs? Since butterflies have many different colors, here’s an activity you can do with a template!
Print off this template and be ready to fill it with color! To find this template and more like it, please visit One Little Project.
Here are two suggestions to do with cut paper pieces: randomly glue precut pieces on to the butterfly or cut out specific shapes to fit the butterfly.
1. The cut pieces work well for young kids. Take multiple pieces of paper and either cut them into small pieces or rip them to create small pieces that can be used on your template. I found I needed to rip or cut the pieces even more to fit on the butterfly.
2. Glue the strips of colored paper to your butterfly to make your own personal butterfly! (It’s easier to put glue directly on the template and put the paper pieces on top of the glue.) It’s up to you whether you cover all the white space or leave some of it. This option works well for younger kids. They might come up with something like the image on the bottom right.
OR you can cut specific butterfly shapes to put on the template to create something like the image on the bottom left.
That’s it!! You’ve just made a butterfly like the ones from Backyard Bugs and Waiting for Wings.
Cut paper illustrations take time and concentration—just like other forms of art. Some people even use magazine pages or painted paper to create cut paper art. Feel free to look around your house for paper that you’re no longer using and make art!
Did you Know? Cut paper illustrations started with an author/illustrator by the name of Leo Lionni. He wrote a book in 1959 titled, Little Blue and Little Yellow. Ezra Jack Keats followed with his book, Snowy Day. Then came Eric Carle with his books, like The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Now, artists use cut paper illustrations more often than they used to, but it isn’t as common as pencils or paints.
Here are more books with cut paper illustrations:
Note: Some links will take you to the Read, Discuss, Do bookshop.org storefront. Purchasing a book from the storefront will support independent bookstores and help maintain Read, Discuss, Do at no additional cost to you.
More Picture Books Illustrated with Cut Paper
One Yellow Ribbon by Marthe Jocelyn
Another by Christian Robinson
Henri’s Scissors by Jeanette Winter
Look! by Gabi Snyder, illustrated by Samantha Cotterill
Thankful by Elaine Vickers, illustrated by Samantha Cotterill
Where Do You Look? by Marthe Jocelyn and Nell Jocelyn
Everybody in the Red Brick Building by Anne Winter, illustrated by Oge Mora
If you’re joining us for Summer Art Camp, we’d love to hear from you. Let us know in the comments, or reply to this message if you’re reading in email. You can also post on Instagram. Be sure to tag us and use the hashtag #RDDSummerArtCamp! We would love to see your caterpillars and butterflies!