MARY BLAIR SECRETS

 It's always fun to run familiar pictures through Photoshop filters to see what happens. Sometimes the simplified color and shapes make it easier to see how the artist organized his ideas. I'll try that here with a couple of pictures, starting with a Mary Blair concept sketch for the nursery in Disney's "Peter Pan."

BTW: I like the granular light coming from the green lamp.

Wow! The filter shows a monochrome brown picture with color accents...no surprise there...but the shapes are revealed to be dominated by linear horizontals punctuated by spaces, like some kind of I Ching diagram. The red and white shapes are more organic and attention-getting.

As I said, most of the picture is brown but what colors there are seem to be double complementaries, like the kind in the diagram above. Some artists avoid this color strategy because it's unappealing when a picture has only those kind of colors. That all improves when the colors are used as accents within an otherwise monochrome scheme.

Here's (above) a terrific Boucher. Maybe it's a detail from one of his allegory paintings, I'm not sure. 

Put a filter on it and the structure is revealed.  The two cupids and the bust form an obvious triangle, but...Yikes!...there's a strong, dark horizontal about 2/3 of the way down from the top, and a blue/black focal point under the cupid's art paper.

The colors appear to be basic red, yellow and blue primaries modified by tints and shades and co-habiting with neutrals.

Last but not least...here's (above) the George Herriman caricature I put up recently. Let's take one more look at it, this time filtered.

Holy Cow!!!!! Boy, am I glad I did that! The blacks form spots all over his shape. That means the points of black were an important design unifier, and not just borders around the colors.

Interesting, eh?