Whatever should one do on the first snow day of the season? Why, DRAW of course!!
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Animals Art: Drawings Art: Inking Character Designs Illustrations Random Doodles Sketchbook
Category: Animals
As we enter the Christmas week of a second strange year in a row, I wanted to share with you my official Christmas card for 2021. The art itself was created with watercolor, gouache, and colored pencil – a little handmade touch in this digital world of ours.
Away in a Manger is one of the most popular Christmas hymns ever written. Strangely enough, its origin is one of dubious distinction, for it is unclear as to who are the authors.
The first publication of the poem was in 1882 by an anonymous author, and only included the first two stanzas. Confusion reined as to authorship, because the lyrics were titled Luther’s Cradle Song, saying that the poem was written by Martin Luther for his children in the 1500s. Perhaps this was just a fanciful claim by “Anonymous” to lend importance to the words, because there has never been found any version written in Luther’s native German predating this American publication. People read it, believed it, and perpetuated the false Luther authorship idea in continued publications for many years. In 1892, the third and final stanza was published with attribution once again falsely going to Luther. Others later laid claim to writing the third stanza, so the authorship continued to be muddy.
Musically, this song has been performed in dozens of settings, however, just two continue to remain popular to this day. The version that starts on a high note and is sung by many in the United States was published in 1887 by James R. Murray who falsely claimed Martin Luther also wrote the tune. By 1914, the melody was attributed to someone named Carl Meuller, a man who is otherwise unknown to history. So, even with this, we really don’t know who the composer is!
The other popular melody we know today that starts on a deeper note was written by William J. Kirkpatrick and first published in 1895. It is his version that carried this Christmas song beyond America’s borders to become beloved around the world.
Kirkpatrick was born in Ireland, and later moved to America where he settled in the Philadelphia area, eventually becoming involved in being a church organist and composer for the Methodist Episcopal denomination. Whether written on his own or with writing partner John R. Sweney, Kirkpatrick published many hymns that richly live on to this day such as ’Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus, Blessed Be Thy Name, Will Your Anchor Hold, A Wonderful Savior is Jesus My Lord, Redeemed, O To Be Like Thee, Lead Me to Calvary, We Have an Anchor, and My Faith Has Found a Resting Place.
William J. Kirkpatrick passed away in 1921 while working on a new hymn at his desk. This past August, I visited his grave at the West Laurel Hill Cemetery near Philadelphia.
If only we all could leave behind such a legacy.
Back in August of this year, I was hired to storyboard a new animated Christmas music video for Capitol Records’ recording of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer as sung by Burl Ives. You remember ol’ Burl, right? He was the narrator of the original Rankin-Bass production of Rudolph back in the 1960s.
Well, this new production was accomplished by the Fantoons Studio using computer graphics, but they did a great job making it look like stop-motion puppet animation. Here’s the video as it appears on YouTube:
Okay, I know you are all wondering, so let me set the story straight – why doesn’t Rudolph have a red nose in the cartoon? Well, despite Capitol Records having the ownership of that recording, they don’t own the rights to the visual of a reindeer with a red nose. That right is likely owned by whoever owns the actual song, thus my director’s invention of the floating red orb.
Storyboarding is not always a very glamorous art form. You don’t always have the time to make frameable pieces of art. My drawings for this were fairly simple sketches due to only having about three days to board the whole thing, but in that time, I whipped out about 260 drawings based on a written outline from director David Calcano. What IS important is what those drawings communicate: composition, camera angles and movements, transitions, sets, props, costumes, indications of lighting, acting – basically all those aspects of filmmaking that you see when you watch a movie or TV show.
Thought I’d share with you a few of my storyboard panels, followed by the corresponding final frames from the video. I was really impressed with how the artists who came after me really used the boards as inspiration for what they did in the final video – I especially was tickled to see how faithful they were to my portraits of the other reindeer at the beginning, yet rendered so beautifully. (Coming up with those silly portraits based on the reindeer names was most definitely a “chadism.”
I also created character facial expression sheets for the animators on this short, which is usually a function of the character designer (a job I have held many times in the past). The director thought I should do the expression sheets for this short on their final character designs (which I did not have at the time I boarded this), probably because of all the acting I had put into the boards.
I thought the team did a fantastic job, especially considering that starting in late August for an animated Christmas project is cutting it close!
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I had the pleasure this past August to illustrate a Thanksgiving article for this month’s issue of Clubhouse Magazine published by Focus on the Family. It tells the story of Sarah Hale, the woman responsible for convincing Abraham Lincoln to make Thanksgiving an official holiday.
Sarah was an accomplished writer of books and the author of Mary Had a Little Lamb, and she was also the editor of a very popular magazine based out of Philadelphia. Her persistent letters over the years to several U.S. presidents finally got results with Lincoln.
I wanted a bit of a hand drawn quality to this illustration, so the final line art was a black Prismacolor pencil drawing on bumpy watercolor paper. It was then colored in Photoshop.
Here is a detail of the newspaper with some headlines that may or may not be historically accurate. I’m particularly fond of the Thanksgiving day sale ad in the lower corner of the newspaper that is announcing the first official Thanksgiving holiday. Silly is what I do, even in the midst of a history lesson.
When researching the details for this illustration, I found this great image of an older Sarah Hale who was in her later years during the events of this article. So, I based my drawing of her on this.
While in the middle of working on this piece, I visited the Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia to find Mrs. Hale’s grave. The cemetery was LOADED with historical figures both factual and fictional. While it boasted Civil War generals, Titannic survivors, baseball players, and even a signer of the Declaration of Independence, this was also the cemetery where Adrian Balboa, the wife of Rocky Balboa, was buried in the Rocky movies.
May you and yours have a very blessed Thanksgiving, and remember to give thanks to God for all you have in this brief life He has granted.
Walt Disney – “I only hope that we never lose sight of one thing — that it was all started by a…”
Today’s the day! After church, all you Disney fans in the San Francisco Bay Area should head on over to Mouse-Con in Concord. You can meet me, my pal and another former Disney artist Rick Law, the voice actors I mentioned in Thursday’s post, lots of other special guests, and lots of dealers with Disney merch!
Rick and I will actually be giving a talk together at 1pm on one of the stages telling stories of our times at the House of Mouse!
Details are at Mouse-Con’s website by clicking on this sentence!
Does anyone in the San Francisco area like Disney? On November 7 (this coming weekend), I’ll be a guest at Mouse-Con, a fan-organized Disney-themed convention taking place in the town of Concord, CA. I’ll have a selection of original art available that I’ve created over the past few years like this watercolor and colored pencil piece of Mickey and Goofy!
What’s kind of fun is that I’m actually looking forward to meeting a couple of other of the invited guests that will be there such as Irene Bedard (the voice of Pocahontas), Terry McGovern (voice of Launchpad McQuack in the original DuckTales and Darkwing Duck shows), and John Morris (the voice of Andy in all the Toy Story movies).
Interesting side note – I did a couple of Toy Story coloring/activity books back when the first Toy Story movie came out. In light of that early association with Pixar, it’ll be really neat to meet “Andy!” Should I have him sign the bottom of my shoe?
Oh, and for those of you who are new followers of mine, yes, I’ve worked for Disney off and on over the past 30 years whether in publishing or animation. Come on out and say “hey!” if you are in the area.
Details of the convention can be found at Mouse-Con.com!
Well, here we are on the eve of the final day of MONSTER MONTH. Have you been enjoying it? I hope so, because I’ve sure enjoyed presenting all these wacky characters to you this month.
This is one of my favorites for the month. It’s a traditionally created piece made with ink and gouache paint on blue Canson paper. I had doodled this idea about three years ago, and it just languished in my idea file. When I saw it again, I knew I had to do it, and part of the fun of this one was doing it with those traditional methods. If I ever have a monster art show some day, this will look really great in a frame.
I’m sure you can tell, but just to be clear, it is a version of Little Red Riding Hood.
(I think drool has been a recurring theme this past month.)
Come back tomorrow to see the GRAND FINALE of this year’s Monster Month!! It’s a doozy.
When out West roaming the lonely frontier, the mind can play a lot of tricks on even the most seasoned hombre. You start to hear things. You start to see things. You start to smell things – things that no living creature should hear, see, or smell.
If you should find yourself riding along a dusty trail surrounded by mysterious mesas and you hear the blood-curdling twang of the undead coming from a whirling dust cloud preceded by the stench of a fortnight’s worth of rotting decay, you might just want to tuck yourself behind a boulder to dare to take a peek at the soul-less cowboy riding by on his four-eyed, flaming-haired demon bull followed by his flitting gang of howling bats ready to do his evil bidding.
Speaking of smell, this painting actually smells REALLY good! You see, the paint was something I brewed up – literally. It’s COFFEE, punctuated with some brown colored pencils.
Back in my days at Disney Animation in the late ’90s/early aughts, one of Walt’s old animators Walt Stanchfield used to come in and give us drawing classes once a month. I remember he showed us some sketches he did in a diner that he shaded with coffee. Every now and then, I like to give it a try, too. As you can see, it takes to the paper in a gritty kind of way.