Disney Artists Give Three Cheers For Pooh With The Art of Winnie the Pooh

Last week, I watched The Boys: The Sherman Brothers’ Story, and when it came to the part about writing the music for the Winnie the Pooh featurettes Disney did in the 1960s, a lot of it sounded very familiar. I realized that was because Richard Sherman had related much of the same material in his foreword for The Art of Winnie the Pooh: Disney Artists Celebrate the Silly Old Bear, a beautiful coffee table book commemorating Pooh’s 80th birthday. When I received it as a Christmas gift a few years back, I was surprised to discover that neither Sherman had thought much of Pooh at first glance, but the enthusiasm of costume and set designer Tony Walton had caused them to see the stories in a new light. Meanwhile, I was touched by the anecdote he shared about Jessica McClure, the little girl who captured national attention when she became trapped in a Texas well in 1987. One of the things that got the 18-month-old and her mother through the ordeal was singing the Winnie the Pooh song, since Jessica remembered Pooh being stuck and figured since he got out safely, she would too, and the song reminded her of that.

There’s not a lot of writing in this book, just the two-page foreword; the two-page introduction by Ken Shue, vice president of Disney’s global art development and licensing operations at the time this was published in 2006, which talks about the need for Disney employees to balance hard word and a deep appreciation for “nonsense” and the quotes and explanations that accompany each of the artistic interpretations of Pooh and his friends, along with the name of the artist, the title, and a description of the medium. At the very end of the book, there is also a paragraph devoted to each of the 80 Disney artists whose contributions are included.

This is a handsome collection that reminds me a bit of the public art projects that my city embraced earlier this decade. The first and more successful of them invited local artists to decorate fish statues, using one of two basic patterns; the second did the same with frogs. Boy, did some of them get creative with it! And in both cases, the statues were included in attractive books. The artists here have even more free reign, as the only restriction is that their subject must have something to do with Pooh’s world. The bear himself need not even appear in the artwork, though in most cases he does. For a Pooh fanatic like me, it’s wonderful to peruse these paintings, drawings and other works and get a sense for how many different ways there are to draw inspiration from a beloved fictional landscape.

The artists have an opportunity to discuss their process here, though not quite half of them do. Even when it’s just a sentence or two, I appreciate the insight into that particular person’s connection with the Hundred-Acre Wood. Several others opt to include a quote, usually from The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, that relates to the artwork at hand. For instance, David Pacheco’s untitled colored pencil drawing shows Tigger, Pooh and Piglet sharing a belly laugh, and he explains how Pooh and his friends remind him of his own friends and the joy they take in laughing together. Judith Holmes Clarke’s ”I Can Fly!”, also in colored pencil, is one of my favorite drawings in the book. With its bluish tint and mysteriously fluid look, it shows a winged Pooh and Piglet soaring through a night sky. “To say ‘I can fly!’ is all that is Pooh,” Clarke says. Her biographical sketch lends further insight, as it reveals that she created the Disney Fairies, whose sylvan world is so appealing that I bought the punch-out calendar featuring several of their homes a couple years back.

Most of the pictures look pretty similar to the established Disney Pooh look, but some, like Rich Tuzon’s earthy watercolors that feature a Pooh who moves about on all fours, feel closer to the original Pooh books, and some, like Satoru Kawano’s Block Pooh, which depicts eight of the Pooh characters using only straight lines, feel very futuristic. Lori Tyminski’s earless Pooh pastel, Wincent Van Pooh, pays tribute to Vincent Van Gogh, while Jim Valeri and Geppy Vaccaro’s acrylic Poohcasso honors Pablo Picasso and Alan Batson’s digital The Connaisseur is a nod at Norman Rockwell.

I could talk about every one of the representations in this book, and I’m tempted to, but I’ll just mention a few more that I really love. Steven Andrews’ digital Storyteller shows TIgger telling a lively ghost story to Pooh and Piglet, who clutch each other nervously on the other side of a blazing fire. They’re right beside a meandering creek, and they look to be deep in a green valley, with storm clouds encroaching on the stars overhead. This scene reminds me very much of camping with my folks at Little Pine State Park in Little Pine Valley, PA, and it’s gorgeously done, with everything dark and spooky aside from that tiny circle of light from the fire. As a big fan of music from the 1960s, I love Philo Barnhart’s Technicolor digital Pooh vibrations, which reminds me not only of the obvious Beach Boys song but also Simon and Garfunkel’s Feelin’ Groovy, and Eric Hutchison’s digital Abbey Bridge, which recreates the Beatles’ Abbey Road cover with Tigger as John Lennon, Piglet as Ringo Starr, Pooh as Paul McCartney and Eeyore as George Harrison, gets a big smile out of me.

Carson Van Osten’s pencil drawing Pooh sticks… with you is the perfect way to conclude the collection, with a lovely black-and-white depiction of Pooh and Piglet standing on the Poohsticks bridge, with Christopher Robin standing on the railing and gazing over the side. It looks very much like a marriage of Ernest Shepard and the traditional Disney Pooh look. This is what Pooh is all about, lazy days spent enjoyably in the company of good friends. You can be transported to many such moments with The Art of Winnie the Pooh. If you’ve ever wanted to venture Deep in the Hundred-Acre Wood, this book will most assuredly take you there.