A History of Art part 7

Today's session in the Studio was adding various cartoon related images to the new block. On the right side I put in Felix and Popeye. Both will be colored as black and white cartoons in the final print. When I was young sometimes we would go to a clothing store for kids, which had a little darkened carpeted side room where b&w Popeye cartoons were shown continuously. These Fleischer Popeye's of the 1930's are still favorites- the later ones are a waste of time. The Felix shorts I watched were likely made in color, but on my black and white tv, who could tell?

But the king of cartoons for me will always be golden age Bugs Bunny. There's nothing I don't love about those 1940's Warner Bros shorts- great dialogue, music, animation, and art. And one of my favorites is "Little Red Riding Rabbit", their take on the famous fairy tale. This is a classic 1943-44 short directed by Friz Freleng. (it's up on YouTube if you want to see it, and you know you want to see it) Besides the great gags, I was always drawn to the art of this episode, especially the richly painted backgrounds of Grandma's quite large cabin in the woods. Every room seems to have intricately carved woodwork, interesting textures, and expressive shadows. And of all these rooms, my favorite is the one shown above on my tv, where the wolf passes a roaring fire, revealing that Bugs is hiding under the wolf's own 'Grandma' nightgown, ready to zap him with a flaming coal from that fire. This is one of those things that made me want to be an artist. So this location had to be part of my tower. However, Bugs is never actually fully seen in this room in the original, so I have him peeking from the darkened doorway.

I also worked a few other areas- improving the supermarket scene and starting to work up the far left end of the second level. More about that later.