It's Out! "They Drew as they Pleased," The Artists of Disney's Golden Age.

They Drew as they Pleased, by Didier Ghez. 

Anyone who's ever been a kid will want to get a copy of the new book by Didier Ghez, They Drew As They Pleased, available on September 8th 2015. If it's true that there are no straight lines in Nature, then Getz's book is artistic proof. The golden light and billowing forms of the Disney universe defined childhood and the shape of the world for generations of grown up children.

Pinocchio's theater sketch, by Albert Hurter

Concentrating on the concept art of four early Disney artists, Albert Hurter, Gustaf Tenggren, Ferdinand Horvath and Bianca Majolie, Ghez pieces together a picture of the Golden Age through rare interviews, letters, diaries and other published sources along with copious illustrations.

Tin Soldier sketches, by Bianca Majolie

Incidentally, I wonder if Ghez's inclusion of the lesser-known Majolie might be to silence criticisms of sexism in the Disney camp from the likes of Meryl Streep, whose impassioned slamming of the Disney name was roundly denounced in Animation Magazine.

Sketches for Pinocchio, by Albert Hurter

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs sketch, by Albert Hurter 

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs sketch, by Albert Hurter

Albert Hurter was born in Switzerland in 1883, but came to the U.S. in 1913. A spotty career saw him more-or-less hidden from public view until finally, at the ripe old age of 48, he caught the eye of the man himself and ended up working for Walt as one of his key concept artists (or "inspirational sketch artists" as Canemaker calls them) on projects such as Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo and Snow White.

Hurter at his desk, Disney HQ

Indeed, Hurter became so successful at embodying the spirit of the Disney universe that many of his drawings were used as inspiration for films made long after he'd passed away, including those for Peter Pan and (one of my favorite pieces of animation) Lady and the Tramp.

"Instantly they lay still, all turned to stone," by Arthur Rackham.

Early work by Gustaf Tenggren;
Sven the Wise and Svea the Kind, illustrated in 1932

Another focus of Ghez's book is the phenomenal Gustaf Tenggren. Born and raised in Sweden, Tenggren was steeped in the dark European style of Arthur Rackham and Scandinavian mythology. His twisted Rackham-esque landscapes can be spotted in the forest scenes of Snow White, and in the detailed architectural townscapes in the backgrounds of Pinocchio. Tenggren's work was very much in the winged helmets and blond damsels vein for much of his early career, until in 1936 he took a stylistic u-turn when he joined the Disney team.

Some of Tenggren's work for Disney

Little Red Riding Hood, by Gustaf Tenggren

Artist Proofs of the new book, from Didier's own blog

Ghez has written two other titles about Disney, Disney's Grand Tour and Disneyland Paris: From Sketch to Reality, and is the writer of Disney History blog.

Ferdinand Horvath, forest sketch

Horvath, The Raven

Further sources:

Michael Sporn Animation blog
Hans Christian Andersen on Disney Wiki
The Happy Undertaker

Painted Tuscan Millhouse

Two miles from the small Tuscan town of Pontremoli, a large mill, its outbuildings and landowner's house with its small internal chapel form a borgo, or a kind of small village. Known as Mulino de Cavezzana, the house is currently available for summer rental, and is the perfect location from which to explore Pontremoli - known as the gateway to Tuscany - and its charming surroundings.

The cantinas dates as far back as the 14th century, but much of the architectural detail including many painted ornamental ceilings originated in the 1820s. Once owned by the local Diocese and used by the Bishop as a summer residence, it was most likely decorated by itinerant artisans traveling from major cities to the north, such as Genoa. 

The engraved date on the entrance reads 1596

The Ligurian coast (with its world-famous Cinque Terre region) is no more than 100 miles from Pontremoli, and was historically dominated by the Genoan republic. This precluded the development of a localized painterly style so that a kind of florid mannerism prevailed, painted as it was by 2nd Tier artisans for the most part, but that doesn't mean it's without its charm. When the style popular in urban centers spreads to the hinterland, it invariably becomes a filtered mush of folksy brushwork and overwrought forms. But that's also why we love it.

Foreign painters from Germany and Catalonia were employed in the 19th century to decorate Ligurian cathedrals and churches in the Baroque fashion that was all the rage in Genoa, much the same way that the foreigners Rubens and Van Dyke had been called to the region during the 17th century. The dominant local style in Liguria was Baroque in the manner of dominant Genoa, developed as it was under the patronage and expansive influence of the Jesuit style of church and palace architecture. Nearby Pontremoli has beautiful examples of Francesco Natali's ornate ceiling frescos in the Church of Santissima Annunziata, after his more famous Andrea Pozzo. I'll be writing a blog post about this charming little church next.

It's reasonable to assume that the artists, or at least their assistants, would have been employed to decorate the summer residence of a local Bishop.

The ceiling of what is now a small tea room

Charming stencil designs, and loose Italianate faux marbre decorate the walls

The large ceiling in the main living room has been heavily repainted, but retains its charm.

The internal chapel opened directly to the outside,
welcoming visitors with a devotional marble bas relief and small holy water receptacle.

You're Welcome

I made this and stuck it on my wall to remind myself whenever I need reminding. Just rip one off and carry it with you throughout the day. Here's the artwork below so, you know, now you can be awesome too.

Shut that Door! How to Paint Doors in Perspective

Domenico Remps

Artists are often confronted with painting doors, windows and shutters ajar. This creates a problem: How do we make sure that the door actually fits the frame when it's seen half open?

Surprisingly, mistakes are more common than you'd think, even among master painters.

Vanitas trompe l'oeil, by Cornelis Gysbrechts

It's a head-scratcher that's bested the best. Cornelis Gysbrechts was a Flemish trompe l'oeil master known for his paintings of cupboards containing household objects depicted with stunning realism. Often, he included an open glazed door that revealed the contents within. However, his realism falls flat every now and then because if we were to close over his cupboard door we'd see that it does not fit the frame in which it is sitting.

Not only that, but if we extrapolate the vanishing lines created by the glazed doors, we can see that they don't converge at distance points (above). At least make your lines converge at the vanishing point. This is a pretty big error, but it's not the biggest problem with the painting: it should be pretty obvious that if those doors closed, they'd be too big for the opening and crash into each other.

At least make your lines converge on the horizon

To avoid this mistake, how do we determine the shape and size of our swinging door? Viewed from directly above, any opening window or door would describe a perfect semi-circular arc in space. Seen from an oblique angle, like say, standing in front of it, that perfect arc gets distorted to look like an ellipse.

How do we draw the shape of our ellipse? Viewing distance is the major factor. Here are the rules:

• The shorter the viewing distance (i.e. the closer the viewer is to the action), the wider the ellipse. 

• The longer the viewing distance (i.e. the further the viewer is from the action), the tighter the ellipse.

The above illustration explains how. The cyan rectangle represents Gysbrecht's open cupboard. Draw a circle in perspective (dark green ellipse) with its center at the bottom of the hinged door. My blue dotted construction lines should help you figure it out. Explaining it in words is useless. I set my viewing distance here for about 6', or twice the approximate width of Gysbrecht's 3' canvas. It's too detailed to explain how/why in this post. Just note that now there are green ellipses above and below the door frame on the left and right. Anywhere your door swings (the doors are those pink shapes) its edges should touch the ellipse. Presto; correct perspective.

(A) shows an infinitely long viewing distance. (B) shows a very close viewing distance.

I did another post on viewing distance that might help to fill in. You can see it here.

Now, in the case of the Domenico Remps cupboard the intended viewing distance is very short. Objects are painted more or less life size, and the whole scene is painted as if we were standing directly in front of the cupboard and opening the doors ourselves. However, Remps dispensed with the rules here because if we were truly standing that close, the open doors would be subject to extreme foreshortening (as in B, above).

In actuality, with a viewing distance of 3' or less, the leading edge of the open doors would loom out towards us dramatically and seem quite large. Firstly, this would mean that his doors would be too large to be contained within the frame of the canvas - which would break the golden rule of trompe l'oeil painting. Which is ... all objects should be fully contained within the canvas. In other words; if objects are partly cropped by the frame, then it's a still life and not trompe l'oeil.

Still Life by Champaign (left), Trompe l'Oeil by Hoogstraeten (right)

See the difference above? But that's a different lesson. Back to the topic at hand...

Where were we? Oh yeah, painting doors in perspective. Secondly, it would make an ugly painting. So Remps bent the rules. But they still apply nonetheless. His open doors will clearly close tightly if we swung them shut. He simply tweaked the viewing distance to give himself a tighter ellipse (as if we were viewing from far away) so that he could fit the entirety of the open door within his canvas. Why? It looks better that way. It doesn't matter that it breaks with the illusionistic realism elsewhere in the painting. It was an artistic decision.

Nevertheless, he made sure that no matter what, his doors were still painted according to the rules of linear perspective. They could close if he wanted them to. This is the important point regardless of the viewing distance: make sure your doors can close.

This problem does not apply to doors alone.

Above, we see that a fine trompe l'oeil painting from the Uffizi of an illustrated book is spoiled because of the unnatural size of the pages. Overlaying an ellipse reveals that one of the pages in particular (highlighted in orange) is way too big for the book. If that book were closed, the highlighted page would stick out an inch beyond all the others. If anything, because the open pages are slightly curved, their edges should fall inside the ellipse and not outside.

Below, I took a photo of an antique map and overlaid an ellipse to demonstrate that the edges of the stiff open folds align perfectly along the ellipse.