Today is Mel Shaw’s birthday, and I am paying tribute to
this wonderful artist who passed just last month at the age of 97.
As I said in my review of The Rescuers Mel Shaw’s pastel drawings make-up the opening sequence of
Penny’s bottle traveling to New York. He
worked in various movie studios over the course of his career, but his time
with Disney was the most prominent and well-known. He started at the studio in the late 30’s
before leaving during World War II to join the armed forces and, like another
member of the Disney team Joe Grant, he returned to Disney in the 70’s and
remained there well into the Disney Renaissance in the early 90’s. In fact during that time not only did he do a
lot of concept and design artwork for movies that went into to production, but he
also did a lot of beautiful artwork, both pastel and pain and ink, for a squeal to Fantasia that was never made called Musicana.
He also did concept art for a version of ‘The Little Prince’
with Orson Welles that was also never made.
Another neat
connection that Mel had with Disney was with his second wife Florence
Lounsbery-Shaw the widow of John Lounsbery, another one of Disney’s Nine Old
Men. Mel’s second marriage is also now a
rather bittersweet topic as he died on what would have been his 27th
wedding anniversary, though Florence died in 2004.
Even though Mel is gone now his work remains, in what he did
for the film industry and his personal work too which can be found on his
website http://melshawstudios.com He
also finished an autobiography entitled ‘Animators on Horseback’ that apparently
will be published posthumously.
So for
achieving a lifetime of wonderful, beautiful, artwork that is sure to inspire
others for a long time to come I salute you Mel Shaw!
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