Some More Mickey Mouse Magazine Pages.

Once in a while I got to do some illustrations of the characters from the Disney feature films, as some issues would tie in to one that was perhaps being released on VHS at the time. I enjoyed doing the spot paintings above of the Lady and the Tramp characters, although there was something that I took exception to and didn't hesitate to make my argument known. You'll note that in the second column it refers to "Scamp's brother and sisters", which, as every Disney fan knows, is just plain wrong! Scamp had three sisters but no brothers, so I insisted on depicting them exactly as they appeared in the film. While the editors allowed that, they resisted changing the text in the story to match, as I think they wanted to indulge in some political correctness to be more "inclusive" of their boy readers. By the way, the writer of the piece was noted Disney historian and author, Jim Fanning, and he wasn't to blame either. I talked with Jim about it afterward and he said he was just as uncomfortable writing it like that too!

The following set of four illustrations featuring the Pinocchio characters were a lot of fun to do, although the concept of the pages really frustrated me. The round holes were meant to be cut out so the kids could poke their fingers through and do finger puppets. While it may have worked okay on Pinoke's nose and Figaro's tail, I'm afraid that the Blue Fairy and Jiminy Cricket didn't fare so well. With or without the kid's fingers acting as arms and legs, these two characters were doomed to looking like war amputees! Still, the job was fun to paint, as I was trying to capture that watercolour look of the backgrounds from Pinocchio. I just wish I could have included all those missing appendages...

Mickey Mouse Magazine

Despite growing up loving Disney animation since I was a young kid, these days I am not particularly enchanted with the company. In fact, I think that when they changed the name from Walt Disney Productions to the more corporate The Walt Disney Company, that signified the beginning of the end for me. Still, back in the 90s, I must admit I was getting some very good freelance jobs, some from within Disney itself, but mostly from their licensed vendors and publishers. Here are some samples I thought I'd post of various illustrations I had done for The Mickey Mouse Magazine, a very nicely produced publication put out by Welsh Publishing from about 1991 through 1996. They were also putting out Duck Tales Magazine at the same time, which of course was a tie-in with the popular TV cartoon. I was a regular freelancer on both publications for the duration of their run.

The art director I was dealing with on both magazines was a delightfully wacky lady with a sly sense of humour named Margaret Ottosen. Margaret was just wonderful to work with and she would always send her rough layouts to me in envelopes covered with various rubber stamped images cobbled together in amusing situations, just for a laugh.


I had a lot of fun on these illustrations, as I got to take each one from rough sketch, through clean-up pencil, to finished painting. All of these were painted in gouache on illustration board. Even if I were to do these today, at most I would only use Photoshop to perhaps paint the characters on a separate layer like an animation cel, but I would still paint the backgrounds traditionally with real paint. Trying to paint in a style as close to the look of the animated cartoon shorts was always my goal.


I also liked to include obscure secondary characters from the shorts whenever an animal was called for in a scene, rather than just make up some generic cartoon animal. The cat in the above Pluto illustration was from the cartoon, Plutopia. I guess I must like Spike the Bee, as the little rascal snuck into both of the illustrations above!

Margaret knew that I had a particular penchant for drawing the Disney ducks, so I would often get assignments featuring Donald, Daisy, and the nephews.





Alas, Disney no longer does much with their standard characters anymore. No longer in vogue in publishing or other merchandising, Mickey and friends have instead been relegated to babysitting the preschool set on the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse series. Additionally, they've been given a bland CG makeover too, as the Disney brass have made it quite clear that they really don't like cartoons.

Gouache Meets Photoshop

In my previous post I showed some sample illustrations from a couple of Disney books that were painted completely in the traditional method of paint on illustration board. However, just so you don't get the idea that I am totally against using Photoshop, here are some samples that employ a hybrid method that I like to use.


This illustration is from a book published a few years ago by Random House, entitled "Beauties in Bloom", which featured two spring themed stories, one featuring "Snow White" and the other, "Cinderella". This was the first in a series of seasonal books put out as part of the "Disney Princesses" program. Though I'm admittedly not keen on the packaging of the characters under the "Disney Princesses" banner, I do enjoy illustrating the classic characters in original new tales, rather than just retelling the film stories.


After my final pencil layouts of the pages have been approved by Disney, I then separate the elements of characters and backgrounds. I transfer the background drawing onto a sheet of illustration board using graphite paper and a photocopy of my drawing that I can trace over with a sharp hard pencil. Once the background image is on the board, I start out painting in the large areas such as sky and grass using dilute washes of gouache on the surface which has already been pre-moistened with water brushed on evenly with a large flat brush. Once the larger expanses are in, I can start building up the details of bushes, trees, and surface texture on the ground.

In the case of "Snow White", since the film's backgrounds were rendered in watercolour, I am using the gouache more dilute in order to approximate the look of real transparent watercolour. It's a bit of a cheat, but then I'm pretty sure that even the Disney artists used some opaque gouache in areas that needed lighter highlights over dark areas. Frankly, I've never been good at handling real watercolour, so I prefer to use gouache because I'm more comfortable with it. Once all of the backgrounds have been painted, then comes the rather tedious task of scanning them into Photoshop, usually in two or three sections because of the limited area on the scanner plate. I then have to reassemble them into single Photoshop files, which is often tricky due to some areas having scanned a bit darker or lighter than others, and therefore needing some adjustment.



With the backgrounds out of the way, I can then get to the characters. Working from my clean pencil layouts, I place a sheet of matte finish mylar film on top of each one and, using a very fine #00 watercolour brush, carefully ink each set of characters as delicately as I can in order to approximate the way they used to hand ink the old animation cels using a crowquill pen and ink. When these are all completed, I then scan in each sheet of character art, again sometimes having to reassemble any large character groupings that were too big to scan in one piece. (Fortunately, that doesn't happen often.)

At this point, each page of character line art has to be converted into a transparent layer in Photoshop. This is so that I can then colour the characters by "painting" on a second transparent layer below, thus resulting in an image that really does approximate an animation cel with solid flat colours beneath the clean ink lines. What's nice about this method too, is that I can very easily go over separate areas on the line layer to change the colours of the line to something that relates better to the area of colour they contain. This is also the way they used to ink the cels in the early Disney feature films. Usually I keep this part pretty basic; just brown lines to surround warm colours and dark blue lines for blues and greens. I do a bit of tonal modeling on the areas of colour, but I keep that real basic too, otherwise the characters start looking too much like plastic.

Once both backgrounds and character layers are in the computer, it is then a very easy and fun process of assembling them together for the final picture files. The benefit of working this way as well, is that if either Disney or the publisher require any changes to be made, it is not much problem to slightly shift or adjust the size or colour value of a character, without having to worry about the background. Finally, the real benefit for me is just sending the client a couple of CDs containing all of the page setups, instead of sending a bulky stack of original illustration boards by Fedex, which can be quite costly, as well as nerve racking, hoping they arrive safely.

Because I really enjoy trying to match the background painting style of the original film, here are a couple more examples of my Disney book work which show some variety in approach:


This is a scene from "Happy new Year, Pooh!", that I did as one of a series of "Winnie-The-Pooh" books for Reader's Digest. It was a book of the month type of thing, where each title related to something in each month of the year. I did three books in the series. I quite like working with the Pooh characters, as well as doing the looser pen, ink and watercolour backgrounds that the film employed to adhere more to the original Shepard book illustrations. These backgrounds are more like coloured drawings than true paintings, and therefore are easier for me.


Still, that doesn't mean I shy away from more painterly approaches, as I had fun trying to mimic the style of background artist, Eyvind Earle, in "Sleeping Beauty". Eyvind would paint in large, opaque, flat areas of colour, then build up the surface detail in multiple layers with his gouache. My paintings are a lot more basic than his, though, as he would create incredible textures and ornate design work in his film backgrounds. In June of 2007, I got to see the exhibit of original Disney animation art that was on show in Montreal (having first debuted in Paris). It was a real pleasure to be able to get up so close to some original Eyvind Earle backgrounds and analyze his approach in the brush work and order in which he would paint all of the elements. His gnarled, old tree trunks were incredible to behold. My simplistic "forgeries" pale in comparison, I'm afraid, but it sure is fun trying to paint in his style!

In Praise of Real Paint!

Since I've been extolling the virtues of using real paint on illustration board, I thought this might be a good opportunity to show some samples of the art I've done for various Disney books over the years. These are all painted with gouache, an opaque form of watercolours.



As I've often mentioned in previous posts, "The Jungle Book" remains my alltime favourite of the Disney animated features. Therefore, it was a real treat to illustrate this book for Random House, which was just a simple retelling of the story targeted to beginning readers. It was one of a series of books under the umbrella title of "My First Disney Story". I drew and painted four of these books and did the pencilling for a fifth that was painted by another illustrator. I am quite comfortable using gouache, and endeavor to paint the backgrounds fairly close to what they look like in the original films.

Painting the characters in these illustrations is a bit tricky, and I always start by masking them out with frisket so as to keep the characters untouched as I paint the background behind them. That way, the characters are still just my pencil lines on clean white areas of board when I go to paint them in. As you can see, I keep the tonal rendering on the characters to a minimum, so they don't start looking all shiny like plastic. (I don't like the Disney video box art for that very reason.) I find that just a bit of dry brush shading on one side gives them the clean, crisp look that I prefer.



These samples from the "Bambi" book I illustrated for that same series unfortunately never saw the light of day. This particular book was sadly never published, as Random House execs were keeping a close watch on sales of the other books and weren't sure how well "Bambi" would do. Though I was still paid well for my work, it was a real disappointment not to see this one in print, as I had really enjoyed doing these paintings. In addition to these two titles, I also illustrated two others in the series on "The Lion King" and "Snow White", as well as having pencilled the illustrations for a "Dumbo" book.

This was at a time when Disney Consumer Products was still greenlighting lots of fun projects, utilizing characters from many of their classic films. Sadly, the mindset there is far different now, with book product limited pretty much to just the "Disney Princesses" franchise and "Winnie-the-Pooh". The only other films that still get some book tie-in seem to be the Pixar titles. Frankly, I miss the days when Disney was still celebrating their classics of the past, as these were the characters that I was happiest to work with. I wish that the folks at Consumer Products would realize just how big an audience still exists for those classic animated films. Additionally, it would be nice if Mickey and the gang would start to be used again properly, instead of relegated to just that preschool "Mickey's Clubhouse" with its unfortunate computer generated animation...

That's a Good Question!

I was going to answer this question from the clever cartoonist known as Bitter Animator in the comments section where he asked it, but then I thought it might be lost there. I consider it a very fair question that deserves a proper (if longwinded) response:

"Mr.E, do you have to switch? I mean, it's not like you're not getting great results with your brush and ink. I guess it depends on working situations but, hey, if it ain't broke..."

Bitter - You know, it's funny you should ask that because I just had a similar conversation the other day with my buddy and fellow instructor, Johnny. I was telling him of my computer woes and frustration with accomplishing anything decent with Photoshop brushes, when he asked me the following: "Even if you were able to get satisfying results with the tools all operating to your liking, would you give up traditional media in favour of now working digitally?"

After thinking it over for a moment, I replied, "No, actually I wouldn't." Here are my reasons why not. First of all, even if I was able to create the "perfect brush", suitable for digital inking and painting, it would still require constantly resizing and tweaking the settings of opacity, flow, etc. As it is, I can so easily get the line I want through the simple adjusting of pressure and angle on my sable brush. Also, wielding a real brush on a real sheet of illustration board, I can swivel the board to any comfortable angle in order to more easily pull a nice controlled ink line. I can't do that with the Wacom tablet, and would therefore require an expensive Cintiq to have that ease of mobility. As it is right now, I feel very constrained using the stylus and tablet.

Also, the fact is I just love the intuitive feel of working with real media. There is something very satisfying about choosing the preferred surface on which to work, and feeling the tooth of that surface as I apply the brush with ink or paint. Likewise, there is the intuitive feel of knowing just how much to dilute the paint or not, depending on the desired effect, and then knowing instinctively just how much I can rework the paint on the board before it dries. Even aside from the tactile nature of real media, there is that appeal to the sense of smell, too. Fact is, I just love the smell of ink as I work. I've known that smell since starting to ink back when I was about 12 years old, and I'd miss it if I only inked digitally.

Finally, there's the very basic reason that, when creating art digitally, there will never be such a thing as an original piece of art. Anything tangible to hold in your hands or frame on the wall will always have to be a printout. Frankly I love to look at my original artwork, where I can study it and remember how I achieved a certain effect by observing and analyzing the brush work.

So why do I want to be able to learn how to ink and paint digitally? Perhaps somewhat as a matter of satisfying my artistic ego, knowing that I can keep pace with the computer age. Mostly, though, I think it's out of a fear that if I can't produce work digitally, that I become less marketable, as I'm finding that some clients now insist on having digital art. I once talked to an art rep who told me that he won't even look at anything inked traditionally anymore, as he wants everything in a vector line for reproduction at any size. So there I can't even win with Photoshop, as I'd need to learn that wretched Illustrator program with the insidious bezier curves/ pen tool.

Personally, I find the digital trend highly disturbing and would rather continue to coast along with my traditional skills honed over a lifetime of working this way. At most, I would rather utilize the computer only in a hybrid fashion, combining my hand inked drawings with the ease of adding flat areas of colour with Photoshop. A little bit of rendering is okay, though I prefer not to overdo the adding of shadows and highlights, lest the image start to look more like plastic than flesh and cloth. This image of the bear is pretty much the way I've used Photoshop in the past, and I will probably continue to use it simply as a colouring tool in most of my artwork, although I would still like to see what I could accomplish if I can ever get a handle on this digital painting stuff.

A Disney Halloween!

In celebration of Halloween, I thought I'd post a couple of illustrations that I drew and painted about 3 years ago as part of a Disney Halloween book published by Random House, entitled "Don't Go Bump in the Night!" The book offered a series of safety tips to kids by utilizing various characters from both Disney and Pixar films to illustrate them in a fun way. This book can still be ordered here on Amazon.

In this painting of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the point was to show kids how important it is to carry a flashlight in order to see your way in the dark. The characters were drawn on paper and inked traditionally with brush on a transparent sheet of mylar. The linework was then scanned in and coloured with Photoshop (including the outlines) on a layer that was created on top of the background painting that had also been scanned in beforehand. (Click on all images to see them larger.)

Here is the background art on its own. I try to paint each background in a style that matches the film itself. In this case, I was trying for a more delicate watercolour look, although I was actually using dilute layers of gouache to achieve the effect.

In this painting of The Lion King, the tip was regarding the recommended use of makeup instead of facemasks that might hinder one's eyesight. This was just a single page illustration, as opposed to the 2-page spread of Snow White above.

Again I was trying to match the background style of the film itself, this time using the gouache more full-strength as it was used in the actual film production. By the way, this hybrid approach of traditionally painted backgrounds combined with characters that are traditionally drawn and inked, yet coloured up in Photoshop, is about as much as I would want to involve the computer in my artwork. I do not personally care for the look of digitally painted backgrounds and I also prefer the tactility of real paint on a cold-pressed illustration board. For me, it is all about the aesthetic.

Unfortunately, I can't take credit for the cover of the book, as it was illustrated later by one of Disney's in-house artists, I believe. From what I recall, the design concept for the cover had not been finalized when I had first been sent the project.

Jungle Gal!

As I look over these blog postings thus far, it occurs to me this place is in need of a bit more colour. Most of my personal art is, I'm afraid, in black and white ink line, so the colour pieces are going to be the exception to the rule. Anyway, here is one that started out as a pencil doodle that I then tacked up on my corkboard above my drawing table for inspiration. Some time later, my friend Adam was around asking if I could give him a quick painting demo to help introduce him to using gouache, my paint medium of choice.

I decided to grab this jungle girl doodle as a fun subject to use and proceeded to trace her down onto some illustration board using graphite paper. Prior to using graphite paper, however, I usually like to rub away most of the excess graphite, as it tends to be a bit greasy at full strength, making it more difficult to cover with the paint. Once on the board, I started to cover the main areas with mostly flat tones of colour, sometimes working in a bit of wet-on-wet, like in her hair, but mostly leaving the rendering to a layering of dry brush applications. I really like the dry brush approach with gouache, as blending it can be a pain in the butt and there is something so nicely illustrative about a clean, crisp dry brush technique.

Due to this just being a quick painting demo, I was working pretty fast and the result is certainly on the loose side. However, I really kind of like the spontaneity of it, rough spots and all. Just for fun, I later scanned it in and Photoshopped it onto an appropriate jungle photo background.

Like a lot of longtime cartoonist and illustrator friends and colleagues of mine, I really love the gouache paintings that used to be the norm in magazine and children's book illustration. I'll probably post some links soon to illustrators from the 50's and 60's whose work I really love in this medium.