Monday, December 7, 2020

Holiday Art

I love this pastel sketch by Mel Shaw for Disney's The Small One. Beautiful composition and color mood. I swear, Mel knocked out illustrations like this, one after the other. I witnessed this during Black Cauldron, Mouse Detective, Beauty & the Beast and Lion King. He was a wizard!


A pretty holiday painting by Disney background artist Art Riley. Probably for a Christmas card. Riley worked on many features as well as shorts from Pinocchio to Jungle Book.


Christmas Carols of the canine kind. Mary Blair painted this image for an early version of Lady & the Tramp. The final version of the film does not show her influence as far as color styling. But Cinderella, Alice and Peter Pan all have a Blair touch.



A charming seasonal color sketch by Preston Blair. The looseness and movement  reveal that an animator painted this. Incidentally Mary Blair was his sister in law.
Preston worked at Disney during animation's golden age. After the strike he animated for Tex Avery and later for Hanna-Barbera.