disney historic 1.4 part 4

it’s very interesting to see the style evolve over the months EARLE was working on it. how he comes up with a special technique, the use of a sponge, to give the bark on the forest trees their typical look. and how he repeats the same sponge look on the stone walls in the castle. somehow he needed to bring the look of the forest and the castle interior together, another element was the long stretched cathedral-like pillars in the castle, and similar stretched trees. the cottage interior was easier, since there was a lot of wood and bark, together with repetitive textures, repeating what he used on the forest floor, grass patterns. and that came from the persian miniatures.

the choices of color are amazing as well. very tasteful and moody combinations, especially in the forest where the colors range from fresh springlike to very somber and subdued. today, painting in photoshop, it is easy in the last steps to adjust the color range. that way you don’t really have a problem to make dozens of backgrounds painted by a dozen of background painters look similar, and in the exact same color range. but, imagine in those days – everything had to be painted in acrylics and gouache, with a touch of airbrush once in a while. not just the absolute same colors in a sequence, all the details and textures painted the same way. looking at the backgrounds in SLEEPING BEAUTY, they nearly all look like painted by one artist.

the LAYOUT artists –
RAY ARAGON, TOM CODRICK, BASIL DAVIDOVICH, DON GRIFFITH, VICTOR HABOUSH, JOE HALE, JACK HUBER, HOMER JONES, ERNIE NORDLI, MCLAREN STEWARD

and the BACKGROUND artists including EYVIND EARLE –
AL DEMPSTER, DICK ANTHONY, FRANK ARMITAGE, RALPH HULETT, BILL LAYNE, FIL MOTTOLA, WALT PEREGOY, ANTHONY RIZZO, RICHARD H.THOMAS, THEKMA WITMER

© walt disney enterprises