Johnny Appleseed revisited

AppleDempsterAppleDempsterMag
When, in the Eisner years, all departments of the Disney Company were forced to deliver material to be sold through eBay, on what they called Disney Auctions, I was lucky enough to pick up this piece of art. It was described basically as "boy with pan on head and skunk, from a magazine."

What this is, of course, is an illustration by master background painter Al Dempster for the article you see on the right in Walt Disney's Magazine (formerly Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Club Magazine), an amazing run of magazines with simple stories but illustrated by some of the greatest Disney artists in the late 50's. One finds work by Ken Anderson, X. Atencio, Collin Campbell, Vic Habush, Ken Hultgren, Eyvind Earle, Herb Ryman - art directed by Paul Hartley under the supervision of record-boss Jimmie Johnson.

[Visitors: remember to check out the rest of my stuff!!!]

Comments

  1. Steven HartleyJune 27, 2010 at 9:12 AM

    These is beautiful artwork, the layouts are quite simaliar to Mary Blair's

    ReplyDelete
  2. Steven HartleyJuly 23, 2010 at 10:43 AM

    Huh, funny enough I'm commenting this but there is a background painter there called Paul Hartley (not related), and there's a Scottish footballer called Paul Hartley.

    I know its pretty random what I said, but it just came to my head, and since my surname is 'HARTLEY', we have a coincidence.

    ReplyDelete
  3. rosscomposeAugust 25, 2015 at 5:49 PM


    Beautiful Appleseed illustration. I have a small collection of MMC Magazines and have browsed through them to find illustrations from various artists. (Bill Peet for one).

    Will you do anything with the Little Golden and other book artists? Or have you, I have not searched yet? (So much here, so little time.....)

    You probably know of a large anthology book, similar to a Big Golden Book, called Disney Treasure Chest, circa 1940s. It features early developmental concepts for later features like Pan, Lady, and Sleeping Beauty

    Very interesting to see an early version of Maleficent, not glamorous AT ALL. :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Prod. 2074 - Peter Pan (XVII)  - Seq. 15.0 - Voyage Home -- Ending

Image
Directed by Wilfred "JAXON" Jackson, laid out by Maclaren Stewart. Assistant director Mike Holoboff, secretary Toby (Tobelmann). This FINAL draft dated 11/3/52. Animation by Marvin Woodward (Lost Boys, John, Michael), Eric Larson (Peter), Harvey Toombs (Wendy), Don Lusk (Tink), Norm Ferguson (Nana), Jack Campbell (Father), Art Stevens, Milt Kahl (Father, Mother, Wendy), Marc Davis (Mother), Hal King (John), George Rowley (anchor chain, pixie dust, sail, ship), Josh Meador (cloud-ship). And that concludes the draft for Peter Pan, the fourteenth complete feature film draft on this blog! (Ok, you smart-alecks, we still need to see the last page of the Pink Elephant sequence...) As always, I feel the need to stress that these documents were kept to keep track of the responsible person, and as such it may not reflect precisely the specific directing animators who worked on the sequences. If e.g. an inker or checker needed to find out who animated the scene because of some question
Read more

The First Hyperion Ave. Studio

Image
I used to wonder where precisely Walt Disney's first 2719 Hyperion Ave. studio was located, and what it looked like. Since reading about it first in the 1970s in Dave Smith's article in Michael Barrier's great Funnyworld, I spent hours looking at photos, aerial photographs, maps etc, until I found I had a pretty good impression. My aim here is to pass some of that on to you, as I have found there was an interest in this since I posted this image of the staff with their new Charlotte Clark dolls on my Facebook page: Looking through Cecil Munsey's Disneyana, it appears to me that the "funny looking" Mickey with the button eyes is actually an example of the 1930 British-made pose-able Mickey by the Dean's Rag Book company of London. First, the WHERE. Here is the front of the Gelsons parking lot, with the original plot of the studio indicated in a blueish hue. We see the very small building, the back yard that has a car shed does not even reach the current Gel
Read more

Miffy the Movie in cinemas in Holland!

Image
Finally, the film I directed called " nijntje de film " ( miffy the movie ) has gone into general release in 118 cinemas in Holland today! As you can imagine, I am very proud of this film. Interestingly, the reviews are split in two: the ones where the reviewer saw the film WITH a children's audience all give the film four out of five stars, while the ones who have NOT seen the film with kids give it three out of five, and mention "I doubt if the film can keep the young audience captivated." The "four star" reviewers note that it can - that the film "works!" In the Dutch TV guide Troskompas , in the very first review published a week ago, I found a very clear view on this: the reviewer wrote that he feels he has no way of judging the film, but as his kid loved it and was entertained all the way, he could not but give the film four stars. To me, that is the only way to look at it: does our target audience like it? Are they amused and entertai
Read more