Hoo boy. I’ve been pretty busy of late finishing up a big book project I’ve been on for the past nine months. Happy to say that the final touches were completed yesterday! There’s always a huge sense of accomplishment when you do that final paint stroke on something you’ve put so much time into.
I know you are curious, but I’ll not get into the specifics about the book until the publishers finish their part and start to promote it, which could be as far away as sometime next year.
So, to celebrate TODAY, how about I post a completely unrelated new image of Minnie Mouse created for a friend late last month? It came to life by way of traditional colored pencil and watercolor on paper!
Now to figure out what big project should be my next endeavor!
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!
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!
Just smile and wave, boys. Smile and wave.
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!
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.
I’d bet he’d cheer right up if he could just get a nice glass of water.
How about a closer look at some great hat hair.
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.
There are only TWO days left in this year’s MONSTER MONTH! Stick around for what are two of my favorite pieces of the month. Saved the best for last!
Well here’s something different in this month-o’-monsters – an actual bonafide monster job! Back in July I was hired to work on this advertisement for the Disney+ animated series Monsters At Work.
The agency had already written the ad, and another wonderful artist had illustrated it and laid it out (that means the graphic design part of it), but then two things happened: 1. it went through changes, and 2. the other artist had to go out of town and didn’t have the time to make the changes. So, I filled in as needed.
Click on the image to enlarge.
So, what you see here is a true team effort. I illustrated all the characters except three monsters in step 5 and Mike Wazowski (which are all by the talented Liz Masters), and then I re-laid out the steps and bottom info with all the new text following the look that Liz had already established. It was a super fun gig, and obviously I love drawing monsters. Happy to have had a crack at the Disney/Pixar creation all thanks to Liz for pulling me in on it!
Oh, and Disney+ tweeted this out back in July just a few days after I had finished it. Quick turnaround to meet the launch date of the new show!
Spent some time the other day doing some exploratory sketches of facial expressions for Mickey Mouse in my sketchbook, one of my favorite characters to draw.
It’s fun to see what you can get out of him if you treat him as more than just three circles.
Back in the mid-aughts, I worked for a few years on a Mickey TV show drawing him and other members of his world such as Minnie, Daisy, Donald, Goofy, Pluto, Chip ‘n’ Dale, Willie the Giant, Pete, Ludwig von Drake, Clarabelle, Horace Horsecollar, and so on and so forth. Having grown up reading Disney comic books, it was such a blast to get to draw those characters every day for a while.
So, while I do sketches like these from time to time for my own pleasure, I look forward to the next legitimate purpose to work on them again one day!
Of all the characters I’ve drawn from Disney’s Winnie the Pooh world, Eeyore seems to get the most love from folks. It’s strange, but his depression seems to give everyone a lot of joy. Maybe his “Debbie Downer” look on life calls attention to our own doom & gloom attitudes about things, and causes us to realize things really aren’t as bad as they seem.
Now if only members of the news media would latch onto this, we’d have more positive takes on things happening in the world to lift us up instead of tear us down. They need to watch more Winnie the Pooh for better life perspective!
