pegbar club

as far as I remember in summer 1997 don hahn, john watkiss and myself started the PEGBAR CLUB. it was a ‘joint venture’ with a small restaurant PIACERE in the industrial area of glendale, where the DISNEY animation studio was located for a while and where the DREAMWORKS studio is today. the idea behind it was to create a reason to meet wednesdays after work, and that was for everybody in the animation business in L.A. not only disney. the photo-collage below is from the opening night. for all different reasons it did not last for too long, maybe the area was not too inviting. but at least for some weeks it was something new in boring burbank/glendale.

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russell patterson

my first post about RUSSELL PATTERSON’S work was in december 2009 – ‘the patterson girl’, you can see it here. below is now the complete collection I got from JOE GRANT.

© russell patterson

color study 797

jugend

JUGEND was a weekly cultural magazine in germany in the late 19th century. the idea of the editor, GEORG HIRTH, was to break into a new philosophy, a new way of seeing art. and the publication soon became style-setting and launched the german ART NOUVEAU movement, JUGENDSTIL ( young style ) named after the magazine.
during my last years in the DISNEY-studio I became close to JOE GRANT, one of the longest lasting original artists of the old disney era. he had been walt disney’s close friend and advisor during the late thirties and forties, and had been the head of the visual development team and responsible for the first ideas of all feature films at that time. he started to work with a new generation of artists after a break in the late 80s. joe grant had the most amazing collection of books and magazines about art starting in the late 19th century, especially german publications like SIMPLICISSIMUS and JUGEND. every other day he brought some of these treasure books to the studio and I had a chance to look through them and xerox whatever I liked. those where the good times! below are some of these gems. after the cover of one of the JUGEND magazines I chose a series of beautiful very early HEINRICH KLEY illustrations. I am sure you will enjoy these gems…

walk in the park

merry christmas

I want to share with you some of my favorite illustrations created by WILHELM M.BUSCH. the first two are rough sketches showing pretty well how he ‘sculpted’ his drawings. he made changes in different colors and with different tools in the same sketch, mixing ballpoint-pen with feltpen, watercolor and gouache. the images remind me of notes written down while reading a text, so light and effortless. the pen and ink drawing is a final illustration, full alive like a snapshot from a film.

© wilhelm m.busch

style 11.1

the look of the city has changed over the last centuries, some of them grew from small marketplaces in medieval times to huge sizes with tens of millions of people. the once atmospheric cosy environments turned into concrete jungle, with architecture not for people anymore. artists all over the world have captured these changes through their eyes in very different styles. this incredible variety is fascinating for me and it might influence your work as well, in case you need to get some ideas about URBAN LIFE.

analysis 2

for the background analysis below I chose a beautiful recreated pan-BG from a 1936 DISNEY short – DONALD AND PLUTO. it is the first disney cartoon where donald duck and pluto star together. directed by ben sharpsteen the animation was done by al eugster, shamus culhane, fred spencer, norm ferguson and bill roberts. as in most of the early shorts nothing is known about the layout- and background-artist. you can see in the final BG that is was painted by a master. he could have done the walls just in one flat color, especially because it is a pan and you don’t even have a chance to see too much detail during the camera-move. but he wanted to create a believeable atmosphere. there is not just one flat color on the walls in a room, you have reflected colors from objects around, light coming from different sources and there are shadows. besides that there was one golden rule in the old days – a BG should contain well distributed the 3 basic colors – YELLOW, RED and BLUE, maybe a rule coming from the technicolor process. but it alawys works. you find this rule applied in most of the BG’s at that time. of course nobody painted with the pure colors, they were desaturated, but you can feel them. anyway – below you find a very simpified breakdown of that background.

© disney enterprises, inc

lobby cards 4

© disney enterprises, inc

moments 24

wolf erlbruch 4

all book-illustrations and calendar sheets were created by WOLF ERLBRUCH and published by PETER HAMMER VERLAG, wuppertal, germany

© wolf erlbruch / peter hammer verlag

magic violin

WILHELM M.BUSCH illustrated in 1950 the novel DIE ZAUBERGEIGE – THE MAGIC VIOLIN, written by KURT KLUGE and published by deutsche buchgemeinschaft. below compilations of most of the beautiful pen and ink illustrations.

© wilhelm m.busch, deutsche buchgemeinschaft

…ahead

all my best wishes to everybody –

study 12-12-12

an interesting day today, number-combination wise! within the last two weeks I did hundreds of sketches for the new book, studies in composition in general. and looking back I can see how much I learned from every single one. below are a few

lobby cards 3

life drawing

earlier this year a colleague, prof.hannes rall, and myself decided to introduce additional life drawing classes every second saturday morning. we could convince a lot of students that drawing is still very important in our digital controlled artworld. there are problems, especially when it comes to fast gesture sketching. but we see a lot of improvement as well. below are some of my sketches of the students sketching

king arthur

the illustrations below are from the 1962 published book KING ARTHUR AND THE KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE created by GUSTAF TENGGREN ( 1896 – 1970 ).

© gustaf tenggren

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