The Forest of 'Sleeping Beauty'

Through my development as a artist at The University of Chichester I have repetitively come back to the work of old animation. I find that the way I create is mirrored to the style and feel of the old children's movies of fantasy, especially Disneys 'Snow White and The seven Dwarfs'.

My work was dark and eery, relating to the scene where Snow White is running frantic through the woods, confronted with humanoid trees with faces lurking in the dark.

Now I am particularly drawn to the works of Eyvind Earle (1916-2000). Earle was an American background illustration and styling artist at Disney.

An Attempt to Create Depth - Eyvind Earle Style

Eyvind Earles 'Sleeping Beauty' (1959) Forest Scene

Above is a screenshot of the film 'Sleeping Beauty', Eyvind Earle was famouse for his background work and style of this movie. His style is unique and I'm drawn to the marks that he makes to represent the bark, the tree is dark yet Earle is able to bring it to life with detailed and bright brush stroke marks.

Here I'm using multiple layers on the app Adobe Draw to create depth within the tree, still at the beginning stages so there is only the basic shape of the tree. The original photo is below.

This was the tree that was chosen for this piece to work from, Location: University of Chichester

Whilst walking through University I came across this tree on the grounds, I was drawn by its shape and the texture of its bark so I had to take a photo just incase I wanted to use it later, which I did! Whenever I come across a tree I like the look off I take a photo documentation, not knowing if I'll use it later on for a piece or not at all. As you know I get 99.9% of my photos and inspiration from Kingley Vale, but when I can't get up there I try to get inspiration from trees where I live or in places I go often as I want to express the point that "we" don't often realise and appreciate whats around us, the trees are the lungs of the earth. Even I forget to look whilst rushing past to get to class! So I try to notice the "less interesting" trees that are always there, and try to incorporate them into my work as well as the mysterious Yews.

At this point I'm adding in the detail to make up the bark marks of the tree. As I'm trying to replicate Earles style I decided to use a the pointed tool as it worked best to get a paintbrush effect.

I do apologise for the wobbly footage!

Showing the opacity of the tree bark marks ...

At first I was working at its highest, so the bark was really bright which I didn't like as it wasn't realistic as no tree would be that luminous so I decided to try and adjust that! I found that I could simply alter this on the settings of that particular layer, after fiddling around with this I found that I prefer the marks a little more subtle.