Doran's Good Omens Art at SDCC Museum

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Collen Doran Illustrates Neil Gaiman will be opening at the San Diego Comic Con Museum on Oct 4 (through March 2024). In addition to a large selection of work from Chivalry, Snow, Glass, Apples, Sandman, Troll Bridge, and Norse Mythology, Doran will be showing new work from her adaption of Good Omens: the Official (and Ineffable) Graphic Novel by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. In a phenomenal display of fan support, the Good Omens project is now the #1 comics campaign in Kickstarter history, raising over $3 million in less than a month.

Doran is faithfully adapting the original novel. Each page is hand-drawn and digitally colored. The original inked cover drawing was in the exhibit at the Society of Illustrators (NY) from the start, although it was described as a “private commission” because the Kickstarter project had not been announced. In addition to the cover drawing, we will be showing the color version of the cover, and pages 1 and 3, both set in the Garden of Eden.

Here’s the Kickstarter | interview with Doran about the project on CBR | Rob Salkowitz on ICV2

Memory: Tyrus Wong at the Disney Museum, 2014

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Here’s another entry in my ongoing project to rescue exhibit information from my old blog. Today I’m looking at images from Water to Paper, Paint to Sky: The Art of Tyrus Wong at the Disney Family Museum (August 15, 2013 - February 3, 2014).

Wong had a fascinating career. At the time of this exhibit he was still with us. He was 103 and still actively creating beautiful work. This wide-ranging exhibit showed over 150 works by Wong, including a display of handmade kites, which were his passion in his later years.

The exhibit begins with the story of his immigration from China through Angel Island as a child, and what a trial it was, and establishes how he found a balance between Chinese ideas of form and perspective and Western methods of portraying a scene. These ideas are evident in his best-known work, the concept art for Disney's 1940's masterpiece Bambi. In a video, Wong talks about the contrast between the mists and the need for distance in Chinese painting, where Western painting tends to feature the main subject front and center. His atmospheric paintings really set the tone for Bambi, and made it the work of art it is.

Wong was laid off at Disney following an acrimonious labor dispute and strike, eventually working again as a storyboard artist for Warner Brothers TV. He also designed scarves, dishware, greeting cards, and ceramic tiles. His post-retirement watercolors are lovely and moody, showing his isolation as he dealt with that transition in his life. Then he discovered kite making, which he does in a precise traditional manner. He was still making kites and participating in kite events, particularly at Venice Beach in Southern California at the time of this exhibit. Wong's kites looked beautiful hanging from the beams of the open ceiling of the gallery. The mezzanine was ringed with photos of the kites in the air and celebratory quotes from other animators that have found inspiration in Wong's work.

There’s an article about this show on Cartoon Brew with a good slideshow. Here’s another from the Chinese Historical Society of America. Wong passed away at 106 in 2016. Here are tributes from the Disney and Hammer museums.

SDCC 23 Panel Photos

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Memory: Eisner Retrospective at Rio Comiccon 2012

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Continuing my effort to rescue exhibition information from my old blog, I present a photoset from the massive 2012 exhibition The Living Spirit of Will Eisner at Rio Comicon (Rio de Janeiro), co-curated by the Brazilian filmmaker Marisa Furtado and Denis Kitchen. After Comicon the show moved to the Centro Cultural São Paulo (November-December). It featured 107 works by Will Eisner, plus a unique bronze sculpture of The Spirit, sketchbooks, publications, a special section focusing on The Plot, and other materials related to Eisner's life and long career. Photos by Stacey Pollard Kitchen.