Mary Blair Haunted My Mansion

Admittedly, “mansion” is a monstrous overstatement when discussing my dank, spider-infested, subterranean art studio, but I needed a hook for the title. Speaking of notable titles, a book we brought into the studio the other day — Magic Color Flair: The World of Mary Blair — is something Michelle and I pored over for an hour, becoming more enchanted with every turned page, only stopping when the webs being spun around our immobile forms indicated we were in danger of being exsanguinated.

This book, originally released in 2014, celebrates the life and art of the influential Disney concept artist. Filled with page after page of gouache illustrations of classic Disney movies, shorts, and theme park attractions. These illustrations, deceptively simple, manage to tell a story, create a mood, and established that vintage Disney vibe that left a permanent mark in pop culture history.

“With a hip-hip and a clippity-clop, He's out lookin' for a top to chop”

Inspired, my first instinct was to make a trip to the art store, pick up some tubes of gouache and some decent brushes, and try to stumble through my very first experiments with gouache.

For this initial experiment, I chose acrylic gouache.

Practice Makes Progress

My second instinct was to slow down, take stock of my utter lack of gouache knowledge, and watch a handful of how-to tutorials online before I wasted all that expensive paint. Prevailing wisdom seemed to suggest trying to create a smooth blend of colors in a gradient would be a wise first step.

Add just enough water to get the paint moving.

Certainly, Mary Blair employed this technique in many of her concept illustrations. Deep blues blending into sublime greens stood in for dark skies over mysterious oceans. Just some quick brushstrokes with a deep black to represent rock formations and she could create the idea of the mermaid-filled waters around Neverland.

Telling a story with simple shapes was Mary Blair’s expertise.

Of course, since my studio and workshop often feel more like a haunted exterminator’s van parked on the banks of a cursed river, I thought once I got the most rudimentary hang of the materials, I’d start painting ghosts. And since Blair’s work inspired so much of what made Walt Disney a worldwide phenomenon, I thought it only fitting to try my hand at some Disney ghosts.

The Ghosts

The first spirit that materialized was one of the first ghosts I ever saw at Walt Disney World when I was a kid: The Pop Up ghost from the Haunted Mansion graveyard. Of course, with the Haunted Mansion movie coming out this week, I’m sure the constant loop of the trailer in my social media feed had something to do with my choice.

“Grim grinning ghosts come out to socialize.”

I kept it simple. Gradient in the background, simple shapes in the foreground. And I used a color palette inspired by some of the portraits hanging in the many rooms of the mansion. Blair used a dry brush technique to add texture to her illustrations, so I tried the same with the headstone in my piece.

My second vengeful spook was, of course, one of my favorite ghosts since childhood: The Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow. Disney’s feature animation, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad played every Halloween when I was a kid and every Halloween I was glued to that screen the same way I’d been glued to the pages of the Blair book where her concept art for that cartoon is featured.

“When he goes a-joggin' 'cross the land, holdin' a noggin in his hand”

With my version, intent on making the horse and rider look a very specific way, I tried laying down a pencil sketch first and working around it. I don’t know if Mary Blair ever chose to do that. Her work suggests a stacking of layers, background, then scenery, then figures, then foreground elements. All done freehand without all of the fiddling and worry that I was putting into mine. Still, working over a sketch helped me get closer to what I was aiming for.

The final ghost in my experiment is another one that’s been highlighted in a lot of media lately: The Hatbox Ghost. Not only is this headless apparition a featured ghoul in the new Haunted Mansion movie, but Walt Disney World’s mansion is finally getting its own version of the animatronic figure sometime this fall.

“Creepy creeps with eerie eyes start to shriek and harmonize”

One of the things I discovered I like about gouache is that is dries to a very matte finish, while leaving the colors rich and vivid. Another thing is that, because of its opacity, you can often paint light colors on top of dark — something you can’t really do with watercolor very easily — and that is a very useful feature when painting ghosts.

Overall, I’m reasonably happy with my first attempts at brushing gouache onto paper. The creamy texture and rich color make this medium really fun to work with. And looking through the art in this Mary Blair book, I know I’m going to drag out those tubes and brushes again, and head back into my musty workshop to explore this medium further. I know it. Michelle knows it. And the spiders, sitting in the darkness of the rafters, their many eyes watching me, waiting for me to fall asleep…they know it as well.

If you want to take a deeper look at my first gouache experiment and see how these ghosts turned out, there’s a link to this week’s video below.