The Great Disney Art-Swap! °o° *•._.•* ‘ *•._.•* °o°

You may have read in previous postings about me that I consider myself an artist. I would like one day to have some of my work showing, or selling in one of the Disney galleries either off-site or in the parks themselves. My favorite medium is pen and ink, with which I do pointillism. This is something few artists do because it is tedious and time consuming, but I have always found the process hypnotizing and therapeutic, and I found myself getting quite good at it.  I truly love images that include a multitude of Disney characters from different movies which is something you never see in pointillism, but I also love the architecture of the parks and that style was made for architecture.  Here is a shot of my first attempt at a Disney building, The Emporium on Main Street (from Disneyland).

 (click to enlarge)

Lately, I have been trying to branch out from drawing exclusively dots.  I love them, but I love variety, too.  Some time ago, I sat down with a large sheet of drawing paper and composed an ink drawing that I titled “Doodle”, for lack of a better word. That’s all it is really… just on a larger scale, and organized better than most doodles. I have heard that it reminds people of an underwater scene, or bubbles. 

(click to enlarge)

I love this style and I have drawn other versions, playing with the “swirly” aspect, and noticing that it lends itself to a Christmassy, or magic-y look.  Here is what I mean.

(click to enlarge)

Well, for a few years I played around with the design incorporating it here or there, but always unhappy that I could not envision a way to make the design more than a fancy squiggle. Now I have names for the specific styles and a few months ago finally conceived of a way to USE the design as a focal point… 

...but before I share that drawing with you...   let me digress back to the title of this blog posting:  "The Great Disney Art-Swap!"... 

I have a friend who is also a (working!) artist, and she ran a photo captioning contest in which her prize was a credit towards a commissioned art piece (with limitations on size/design). Because she is a good friend of mine, this led me to think, what a GREAT idea it is to commemorate friendships with other artist friends I have. 

Enter my friend, Mouseketeer Sandy! 

(Sandy and Ken at my 40th birthday party)

I met Sandy working for a company that provided services to the Deaf and hard of hearing community. We became work-buddies, starting a daily morning ritual of catching up on Entertainment news and theorizing on how celebrities seem to die in groups of three (a belief I heartily subscribe to). We went our own separate ways, career-wise around 2004/2005 but always remained email and Facebook buddies… continuing our celebrity death-watch (sorry to sound so morbid, but I really do follow celebrity deaths and I will always hold a special place in my heart especially for our classic actors when we lose them).

Well, after our paths separated, Sandy went and found herself a small taste of success with her newly found talent of collage painting.  I followed her milestones over the last couple of years with her Las Vegas art gallery showing at the Wynn and watching her grow along the way. Reading her updates was surreal because I would read about her next commission and think, “wow, I KNOW her, and she is doing what I want to do”.

See her blog and online gallery here: http://www.sandypieper.com/

Then a few months ago, Sandy started posting comments that she her and her family was planning a relocation from the Phoenix area to Colorado, just because she was flat out tired of Phoenix. I immediately realized that she and I were on mirrored paths, about to experience the same bumps and pitfalls and exciting challenges.  The only difference was the destination.  That’s when I knew I had to ask her to create a piece of work for me to commemorate our friendship.

Here are some examples of her orginal work:

I asked her if she would be willing to create a piece for me, in her style that incorporated something Disney related.  I put no other limitations on it. She wrote back right away, saying she loved the idea but instead of charging me, she wrote back that she propose we each do a piece of art for each other.  Since her work is collage oriented, she asked me to mail her a package of bits and pieces that I wanted incorporated, so I sent her an old Disneyland admission ticket, a couple of fast passes, and a map of the park. From there, she worked her magic and we both finished our offerings and we met up at the end to May to unveil and trade the works that we both created with friendship in heart (and a little pixie dust in mind.)

I’m so honored to be able to own a bit of Sandy’s talent, for all the reasons I’ve mentioned above, and will always think of my friend when I stop to look at this beautiful piece of art. Here is the finished product, with a few close-up shots so that my Disney fans out there can appreciate the little hidden gems. Disney magic truly IS in the details.

As usual, please click on the image if you want to enlarge.

Sandy Pieper's version of "Living a Disney Life"

Below are several detail shots.

(Close-up Detail) 

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(Close-up Detail) 

(Close-up Detail) 

Oh, and because you are still here, reading all the way to the end of the post, here is my artwork that I traded with Sandy. The piece is better in person than in photograph, because it is three dimensional.  The colorful background is watercolor, then the pieces of the Mickey head were cut out of art stock with an exacto knife, and assembled with a piece of balsa wood under each piece to give them dimension. It was all mounted in a shadow box. The finished piece is about 11" x 14". Sorry for the glare.:

(click to enlarge)

And here is the date of the trade:

Thank you Mouseketeer Sandy, we LOVE the new addition to our home and we proudly display it. Here's to BOTH of our families for Living the (Disney) Life, and having the courage to follow our dreams!  I love you.

Comments are welcome. Positive feedback encouraged!

Mouseketeer Ken

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