color study 630

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year of the cats

ANNA MARIA RADKE wrote a collection of short stories THE YEAR OF THE CAT in 1969, WILHELM M.BUSCH illustrated them. the technique is pencil with watered black ink, the color illustrations were done in thin gouache.

© wilhelm m.busch / johannes asmus verlag hamburg

night study

from my last trip to the northern italian lakes –
and, for the book

clean

to show you a better example of a long panning background from an animated short – here is a recreated BG from disney’s CLOCK CLEANERS. directed by BEN SHARPSTEEN it was released october 15, 1937. the painting technique here is watercolor, what means that you get the darker tones by applying dozens of layers of kind of dirty water on top of each other. the same painting technique was later used in most of the first feature films as well. many years later disney traditional painters copied the same technique to create the beautiful BG’s for LILO AND STITCH. it takes a lot of training to paint like that, but the results in case you master the technique are stunning. the technique the woody woodpecker BG-artist used was different. he painted with gouache color, but he tried to make it look like watercolor. unfortunately the wrong way, by adding more water to the gouache color you can make it look transparent. apparently some painters at that time tried that, avoiding the time-consuming addition of dozens of layers, and just do it in one. if you don’t really know what you are doing, like adjusting the colors and values very careful, and control your brushstrokes, it looks like a disaster.

© disney enterprises, inc

contrast

the following captured images and recreated backgrounds are from the 1943 WALTER LANTZ – WOODY WOODPECKER short WELL OILED. the earlier posted BAMBI backgrounds are roughly from the same period of time, but what a difference in quality. it is not a style, they are just painted sloppy, as if the painter was not interested at all to come up with some decent look. but – you judge yourself…

© universal pictures

shades of green

after a long time some more recreated backgrounds from disney’s masterpiece BAMBI. all of them were painted in oil, most of them on glass for the use in the multiplane camera.

© disney enterprises, inc

left

from the book

moments 21

…just doors. closed.