Peter Pan cel - John Michael Wendy

Here we have a cel of John Michael and Wendy from Peter Pan. The cel was trimmed, it was originally a Disney Art Corner set-up which sold in Disneyland through the 1950s- 1970s.

This is the screen capture of the cel. My apologies for the not-so-good quality. I grabbed this from YouTube, somehow my Dvd player could not print screen, the images disappear after I turn off the Dvd player.

Sadly I did not take much pictures during the process of making this background (this was the first one I did), hence I only have the final background up for pictures.


I deliberately left an empty space where the cel would lay, because the paint of the cel was already moistened by the background paint and showed signs of sticking to the background. Hence I painted just enough so the cel could lay over nicely. I did not do a full 16-field background because the cel being trimmed, would be framed and matted eventually around its edges.


This is how it would look like when the edges of the background have been matted out. It took me about 4 hrs to paint the background. It was really interesting to study the background, the evident influences of Mary Blair struck me, especially when I was painting the leaves. One reason I love painting background for 1950s cels were because most of the Disney movies made in that era were art-directed by Blair - Cinderella, Alice In Wonderland, Peter Pan etc. I love Mary Blair's work, they're so dreamy and its amazing how she plays with the colors. For example, in this background, she uses blue for some of the leaves. I would never have though of it.