Mary Blair was an American artist best known for the striking concept art that she produced for the Walt Disney Company.

Born in Oklahoma, the inherently gifted artist won a scholarship to Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles. She graduated in 1933, at the height of the Depression. It was very difficult to find work then. So, Mary took a job as an animator for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) instead of pursuing her dream of becoming a fine artist. In 1934, she married another artist, Lee Everett Blair.

Lee went to work for Walt Disney and, a few years later, Mary Blair join him. She worked on several cartoons that were never produced and contributed artwork to the animated films Dumbo and The Lady and the Tramp.

In 1941, Mary traveled to various South American countries as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy. During those trips, Mary and her husband worked on concept art for the animated feature films Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros. Animator Marc Davis put Mary’s exciting use of color on a par with the master artist, Henri Matisse. He said of Mary Blair, “She brought modern art to Walt (Disney) in a way that no one else did. He was so excited about her work.” Disney enjoyed her work so much that he made her art supervisor on those films.

After that she helped Walt Disney produce a new film almost every year. Blair worked as a concept artist. Her color styling can be seen in Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Peter Pan (1953). The influence of her concept art is strongly felt in those films as well as several animated shorts she designed during that period. Animation historian John Canemaker wrote “The way she (Mary) painted – in a lot of ways she was still a little girl. Walt was like that… You could see he could relate to children – she was the same way.”

After the completion of Peter Pan, Mary resigned from Disney and worked as a freelance graphic designer and illustrator. She created advertising campaigns for Nabisco, Maxwell House, and other companies. She designed sets for Radio City Music Hall. She also illustrated several Golden Books including I Can Fly and the New Golden Song Book. Those books have never gone out of print.

Walt Disney was such a fan of Mary Blair’s artwork. He asked her to assist in the design of Disneyland’s It’s a Small World attraction. The ride is pure Mary Blair. Over the years, she contributed to the design of many exhibits, attractions, and murals at the theme parks in California and Florida, including the fanciful murals in the Grand Canyon Concourse at the Contemporary Hotel at the Walt Disney World Resort.

After her death in 1978, Mary Blair was recognized as a Disney Legend. She also received the Winslow McKay award for animation. While the fine art she created is not widely known, her groundbreaking designs for Walt Disney still serve as an inspiration to contemporary designers and animators. You can learn more about her in the recent biography, The Art and Flair of Mary Blair by John Canemaker.

Portrait drawn by yours truly

Do yourself a favor and check out this super cute ABC book by Richard A. Goldberg over at Drawger.

This Saturday in Los Angeles, Secret Headquarters will present COVERED, an art show curated by Robert Goodin, the editor of the Covered Blog. The site invites artists to reinterpret their favorite comic book covers and the show celebrates some of their best work. The details can be found here:

To help raise money for his friends’ art project, Stuart Immonen -notoriously opposed to commissioned work- has offered to draw YOU as one of his Flickr People. The portraits are incredible. The opportunity is extremely rare. The cause is good. The auction is here!

my wife and i have been fantasizing for years about our own spectacular video game. so, this project hits close to home:

james kochalka, the comic book creator of american elf and superf*ckers, hopes to create the video game of his dreams. he and his pals at pixeljam have already begun work on glorkian warrior, a tribute to everything from galaga to metroid to comic books themselves. but they need our help! visit their project page on kickstarter (a fantastic website by the way) to pledge your support and get some cool rewards!

here’s a peek at the game and some concept art just to glimpse how cool it could be!

Well, no, the creator of The Office doesn’t really draw (I don’t think) but he does have a really fun podcast. Perfect for a listen while you work on your next Friday Illustration. (I especially enjoyed his Guide to the Arts.)

Even better, the ridiculous conversations have been brought to life in a new cartoon from HBO: The Ricky Gervais Show. You can download the first episode free from iTunes.

holy moly! s.britt’s eddy broth is now available to squeeze and hug! you can read all about it (and purchase your own – clothed!) on etsy.

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day coming up this Sunday (hatch your plans now!), I thought I’d direct you to illustrator Sophie Blackall’s charmingly conceived, adorably rendered Missed Connections . Ms. Blackall scours NYC’s Missed Connections website and deftly illustrates the messages that catch her fancy.

She says it better: “Messages in bottles, smoke signals, letters written in the sand; the modern equivalents are the funny, sad, beautiful, hopeful, hopeless, poetic posts on Missed Connections websites. Every day hundreds of strangers reach out to other strangers on the strength of a glance, a smile or a blue hat. Their messages have the lifespan of a butterfly. I’m trying to pin a few of them down.”

Maurice Sendak is an American writer and illustrator. He is best known for his book Where the Wild Things Are.

Sendak was born in Brooklyn, New York to Jewish immigrant parents. He had health problems when he was a child but the time in bed allowed him to read a lot. When he was twelve years old, he saw Walt Disney’s film Fantasia. The movie and his love of books inspired Maurice to become an illustrator.

One of Maurice’s first illustration jobs was painting window displays for the toy store F.A.O. Schwarz. His drawings were first published in a textbook titled Atomics for the Millions. He spent several years illustrating children’s books before beginning to write his own stories.

Sendak became famous after writing and illustrating Where the Wild Things Are. The book tells the story of a boy who runs away from home and becomes king to a group of wild monsters. Parents thought the monsters were too scary for a children’s book. The creatures though were actually based on Sendak’s relatives who came to dinner every week. Their accents and unusual mannerisms inspired the young writer. Where the Wild Things Are eventually won the Caldecott Medal, an award for outstanding children’s literature.

The artist’s most controversial book, In the Night Kitchen, was a nightmarish story about a young boy pursued by evil cooks. It was a reference to the Holocaust in Germany that had deeply disturbed Sendak and his family.

Although his books are often dark and even scary, Sendak’s work is beloved by children and their parents. He has illustrated more than seventy-five books and has inspired many other artists, writers, and film-makers. Jim Henson’s movie, Labyrinth, closely follows the plot of Sendak’s book, Outside, Over There, about a girl who must rescue her baby sister from goblins. Sendak was an early member of the Children’s Television Workshop. Through the workshop, he helped Jim Hinson develop a little tv show called Sesame Street. Sendak also designed the sets for many operas and ballets including Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, Mozart’s The Magic Flute, and Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel. He adapted his favorite children’s opera, Brundibar, into English. In 1979, Sendak produced a stage version of his book, Where the Wild Things Are and, in 2009, the book was adapted into a movie. There is even an elementary school in North Hollywood, California that is named after the artist.

In 2009, the Rosenbach Museum & Library presented There’s a Mystery There: Sendak on Sendak. The retrospective draws on the Museum’s collection of more than 10,000 objects and artworks that Sendak has made over the years. The artist continues to contribute to their collection.

Portrait drawn by yours truly