The artist who gave Sleeping Beauty her magic
Week 43's colours are Ultra Violet, Deep Orange, Maroon and Bright Orange
Since Halloween will be happening this week I wanted to include some dramatic orange and purples in the colour prompt. The artist featured was famous for creating dramatic backdrop landscapes and movie scenes. Eyvind Earle was an American artist who’s work is renowned in animation art circles and especially amongst Disney aficionados.
Earle (1916-2000) was born in New York and moved to Los Angeles as a child. His father was a multitalented creative, “an artist, a writer, a poet, played the violin, produced and directed a motion picture” and his mother was a concert pianist.
At the age of ten his father set him a challenge: either read fifty pages of a book or paint a picture every day. He did both.
He took part in an exhibition in Paris at the age of fourteen and at twenty one he cycled across America, painting forty two watercolours sold on the way, returning to New York for his first solo exhibition at the Charles Morgan Galleries. Subsequent exhibitions sold out and in 1939 the Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired one of his paintings for their permanent collection.
Despite all of this talent and success, his application for an illustration role at the Disney Studio was turned down in 1934. He applied again the next week, and again and again over the next three years all with the same result. After continuing his studies, serving in the military and designing Xmas cards he was reintroduced to Disney Studios by a friend and was hired as an assistant background painter in 1951.
(That Xmas card sideline? Earle made over eight hundred designs in his lifetime and in 1995 estimated that over 300 million of his cards had been sold!)
At Disney, Earle’s breakthrough was his work on an experimental short film which won an Academy Award. This caught Walt Disney’s attention and after seeing numerous concept paintings for Sleeping Beauty, Disney himself told all of the animators to follow Earle’s lead! Usually the animators did their work first with the background painters following them, so this was the first time that background paintings would determine the entire direction of an animated film.
The decision created tension with the animators who felt that the rich backgrounds could overshadow their work. Earle was concerned that his vision might be simplified so instead of sharing drafts with his assistants, he began to churn out the finished paintings, hundreds of them, that actually appear behind the animation cels.
Sleeping Beauty was eventually released in 1959, a year after Earle had left Disney. Whilst visually stunning, it ended up a financial flop.
Earle returned to fine art full-time and created thousands of paintings, serigraphs, and scratchboard illustrations, many featuring his signature vertical landscapes of the American West.
His influence at Disney was enduring with his aesthetic directly inspiring the animation of later films including Pocahontas and Frozen. And his Xmas card designs sold continuously for over five decades. Earle was posthumously inducted as a Disney Legend in 2015, recognition that animation could also be high art.
Read more about Earle and Sleeping Beauty at the Disney Fan Club. Here’s another page that describes the challenges of the movie.
‘Seven White Horses’, serigraph, Eyvind Earle, date unknown
Colour Combination
The colours this week are Ultra Violet, Deep Orange, Maroon and Bright orange. This week’s colours will look really dramatic when combined with black or deep blue, use the colours along with a contrasting dark and neutral light colour to create an artwork in any medium or style. Please share this post with someone who likes colour and might like this weekly dollop of colour and creativity.
I love seeing what you create with the prompts. If you’re posting on Instagram, please tag #coloricombo and #estemacleod and join us in the private Facebook group Creative Prompts.
Dive into Blues
Make time for art, learn something new and feel inspired. In this thirty minute masterclass, Beautiful Blues I dive into the medium of aquarelle crayons and pencils using different blues.
Read all about it here and use the coupon code COLORIBLUE15 for a 15% discount off the listed price of £27 (so £22.95, around $31 or €26).
Well, that was interesting! I enjoyed the video you shared as well. Thanks.
Este, really enjoyed this write-up and I’ll be exploring more of Eyvind’s art for sure. Color and composition do a lot of work here as the forms are relatively simple. Can’t wait to see his scratchboard and other works. Thank you.