Strangely Gramatky never worked as a background painter at Disney's. He was an animator, and was reputed to be a pretty good one. Check out his animation (and David Nethery's interesting comments) on Michael Sporn's blog, the Sept. 6, 2011 entry: http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/
BTW how do you like the juicy, vivid colors here: purple, black and green? How do you like the loose, painterly line?
A lot of artists are more familiar with Gramatky's later work (above), which was full of contrasts and used the white of the paper whenever possible. I don't know who pioneered this style, but over time a large number of California painters adopted it.
You don't suppose Gramatky invented this style, do you?
My painting teacher would never let any of us use black. What would he have said if he'd seen Gramatky's pictures, which are full of it? The picture above looks like something Milton Canniff would have done. Click to enlarge.
Gramatky excelled at all the styles he tried, but my favorites were done in the gritty, cartoony, quick sketch method he applied to Depression-era subjects like the one above.
If I didn't know Gramatky did the painting above, I'd have guessed it was an early painting by Lee or Mary Blair.
Like I said, Gramatky did the Little Toot books (above). I have early printings of two of them, and I treasure them. I wonder if these were published by Western Publishing, who did the Golden Books line. Western benefited from a lucky accident that delivered first class lithographic equipment into their hands. The company attracted top illustrators partly because artists knew their work would be printed beautifully.
Gramatky was a close friend of urban painter Millard Sheets, and the influence (above) shows.
I was only able to locate one oil painting (actually acrylic according to Linda Gramatky) of Gramatky's. That's it above. It's terrific, but I think watercolor conveyed Gramatky's cheerful, light-hearted personality better.
