[Repost] Comparison of Leo Lionni & Eric Carle’s Illustration Styles

The shar­ing of the chil­dren’s shoes in the Red Mud Study Group is very inspir­ing!Orig­i­nal address:Com­par­i­son of Leo Lion­ni & Eric Car­le’s illus­tra­tion stylesauthor:Red Mud Study GroupIf we were to ask which author’s pic­ture books are the most eas­i­ly rec­og­niz­able and beloved by chil­dren, par­ents and chil­dren alike would like­ly say, “Leo Lion­ni and Eric Car­le.” Both are artis­tic mas­ters who have writ­ten and illus­trat­ed a vast num­ber of pic­ture books for chil­dren and have also made sig­nif­i­cant achieve­ments in their respec­tive pro­fes­sion­al fields.

Lionel Leo Lion­ni was the first author to intro­duce col­lage as an art form into pic­ture books. Col­lage can incor­po­rate a wide vari­ety of mate­ri­als: news­pa­per clip­pings, rib­bons, small pieces of col­ored craft paper, pho­tographs, or oth­er mate­ri­als that can be glued onto can­vas. His col­lage tech­niques were end­less­ly var­ied: direct col­lage, col­lage with pas­tels, col­lage with oth­er mixed media such as col­ored pen­cils or crayons. What remained con­stant in his work was his mas­ter­ful use of white space, which made his illus­tra­tions incred­i­bly cap­ti­vat­ing. This col­lage-and-white-space approach brought a fresh and clean visu­al effect to pic­ture books. Cou­pled with con­cise and clear text descrip­tions, this not only deeply attract­ed young chil­dren to his books but also made it easy for them to under­stand the con­tent. My per­son­al favorite illus­tra­tion is *Fish Is*.
The illus­tra­tions in Lion­ni’s *Fish* (see below) are fresh, sim­ple, and serene. The translu­cent, nat­ur­al col­ors cre­ate a beau­ti­ful and cap­ti­vat­ing effect, mak­ing it impos­si­ble not to be engrossed. Even I, a stu­dent who only ever got a 3 out of 10 in art, bought oil pas­tels and copied his paint­ings sev­er­al times. If I had seen Lion­ni’s pic­ture books when I was a child, I prob­a­bly would­n’t have got­ten such a low art score. Lion­ni’s illus­tra­tion style influ­enced many illus­tra­tors who fol­lowed him, includ­ing Eric Car­le.

Eric is also known for his use of col­lage in his pic­ture books, which he open­ly admits is influ­enced by Picas­so, Mat­tisse, and Leo Lion­ni. Eric says he likes to paste scraps of blan­kets, sponges, burlap, and oth­er mate­ri­als onto cot­ton paper to cre­ate images with dif­fer­ent tex­tures. He keeps these dried cot­ton papers in dif­fer­ent draw­ers accord­ing to col­or, and when he needs a par­tic­u­lar col­or for his work, he cuts or tears a small piece from these pre­pared cot­ton papers. This is how the famous, beloved cater­pil­lar came to be: “I cut a cir­cle from red cot­ton paper for the cater­pil­lar’s head, and then cut many ovals from green cot­ton paper, and then I used wall­pa­per glue to stick them onto the can­vas.” In addi­tion, Eric is skilled at using brush­es of var­i­ous sizes, some thick and some thin; his lines are some­times straight, some­times curved. Some­times he even splat­ters paint on the can­vas or paints direct­ly with his fin­gers. There­fore, Eric’s paint­ings feel vibrant, unre­strained, and exag­ger­at­ed, as if a sup­pressed pow­er is about to burst forth from the can­vas.

Com­par­ing the illus­tra­tions of the two authors men­tioned above, it’s easy to see that while both Leon­ni and Eric uti­lize col­lage, there are dis­tinct dif­fer­ences between them, pri­mar­i­ly in their use of col­or. Eric favors bright, vibrant col­ors. Many of the ani­mals in his books are not paint­ed in their nat­ur­al col­ors, such as the green fox, pur­ple cat, blue horse, and pink ele­phant. The sun in his sto­ries is often a bright yel­low with orange light. Leon­ni, on the oth­er hand, prefers col­ors clos­er to nature. In “The Inch­worm,” he depicts the robin with real­is­tic dark browns, light browns, and oranges. The branch­es are com­posed of nat­u­ral­is­tic shades of light and dark browns and dark green leaves, while the inch­worm is paint­ed in a soft green. The star char­ac­ter, the mouse, appears con­sis­tent­ly in Leon­ni’s books: vary­ing shades of gray or tan, close­ly resem­bling mice in nature. As a result, Leon­ni’s paint­ings gen­er­al­ly con­vey a fresh, nat­ur­al feel, evok­ing a sense of tran­quil­i­ty, strength, and enjoy­ment. Eric’s, on the oth­er hand, is imag­i­na­tive and unique, his exag­ger­at­ed col­ors and shift­ing lines seem­ing to con­vey a sense of rebel­lion. Per­son­al­ly, I pre­fer Lionel Mes­si’s illus­tra­tions.
If you look at the child­hood expe­ri­ences of the two authors, you will find some very inter­est­ing and intrigu­ing aspects. Lionel Leo recalled that when he was a child, his fam­i­ly allowed him to col­lect a large num­ber of dif­fer­ent kinds of plants and ani­mals, even those that smelled bad: all kinds of live insects, small fish, shrimp, tad­poles, snails, mice, birds, snakes, toads, lizards, frogs. In addi­tion to these live crea­tures, he also col­lect­ed all kinds of seashells, peb­bles, spec­i­mens of but­ter­flies and bee­tles, strings of leaves, pods of var­i­ous plant seeds, feath­ers and dried flow­ers. His room was like a small zoo and plant lab­o­ra­to­ry. He said, “The pro­tag­o­nists in my sto­ries, such as frogs, mice, tur­tles, snails, but­ter­flies, etc., all came from the small ani­mals that lived in my room 40 years ago. They have always been the same.”“
Eric immi­grat­ed to Ger­many from New York when he was six years old. He was edu­cat­ed in Ger­many and grad­u­at­ed from a pres­ti­gious art school. He received a very strict and rigid edu­ca­tion in Ger­many, which made him long to return to his child­hood in the Unit­ed States. Eric said, “When I knew I could nev­er go back to Amer­i­ca, I decid­ed that I would become a bridge archi­tect and build a bridge across the ocean from Ger­many to Amer­i­ca to bring my dear grand­moth­er over.”“
I don’t know if all this is just a coin­ci­dence or an eter­nal truth: a child who has gained full free­dom will show us peace and tran­quil­i­ty in his paint­ings, while a child who has received strict train­ing will be full of pub­lic­i­ty and rebel­lion in his paint­ings.

Huang Jian­ping