This is one of many gorgeous paintings Walt Peregoy produced to help set the style for the 1963 Disney film The Sword in the Stone. Walt was the color stylist on the previous movie 101 Dalmatians, where he had established a modernist approach toward scene settings. Here you can see how he he continued experimenting with shapes, textures and colors. For a vis dev piece this painting is unusually large, 25 x 11”.
I am stunned to realize just how much richness Walt gets into this image, using only various shades of green and blue.
The scene has enough realism to work as a backdrop for an animated film, but it is also highly abstract. Can’t take my eyes of it.
This pencil concept sketch (which Walt might have used as a basis for his painting) is probably the work of Ken Anderson, who was the art director on the film, and one of the artists Peregoy actually got along with (!!)
Beautiful piece, too, showing Wart as he is about to go into the dangerous forest. I love how the top branch points directly into the dark woods, almost encouraging the kid to enter.
