Pencils, Pens and Brushes

Pencils, Pens and Brushes

Mindy Johnson

illustrated by Lorelay Bove

My husband LOVES Disney World.  While it's not my top choice to travel to, I've always enjoyed our vacations there.   (Mostly because my husband does all the planning and I'm just along for the ride.)   Being a detail oriented person, I do appreciate the intentional attention to detail that Disney employs in even the smallest ways.  For example, artists had to create a fake rust color and texture to coat the walls of one of the rides and sections of the park.  And I noticed how the entrance to Galaxy's Edge (the Star Wars portion) was designed in such a way to join the rest of the park via a tunnel angled to create a slow reveal.  Say what you will about the consumerism and inauthenticity, there are some amazing creative minds at work in that place!

 Aside from liking amusement park rides, I'm always on the lookout for artwork that I like.  (Hello Mary Blair!).  After seeing the incredible Cirque Du Soleil show at Disney Springs, I spotted this book in the gift shop.  It's biographical snippets of some of the creative women that have worked for Disney in the past.  Mary Blair was there of course, and I had forgotten that Gyo Fujikawa had also done a stint at Disney.  And lately I've really liked learning about Milicent Patrick.  She created the Creature from the Black Lagoon.     

This book covers not just illustrators, but the women who were writers, paint chemists, or modeled for characters and movements.  At the time these women were embarking on careers outside of what was expected for women.  It's no surprise that many of them were adventurous in other aspects of their life- like becoming pilots or serving during WWII.   I would have liked to have seen more photographs and samples of their own work, but I like Lorelay Bove's illustration style.