Author: Mark Mitchell

Wolf, sloth bear and a Bengal Tiger villain

Posted by Mark Mitchell | May 17, 2012 | Children's book fine art |

Rudyard Kipling’s father John Lockwood Kipling was an art teacher, art school director, museum curator and the first artist to illustrate The Jungle Book stories (volumes 1 and 2) that his son wrote. Then, like good tales...

The baby elephant who helped a cartoon studio to fly

Posted by Mark Mitchell | May 2, 2012 | Children's book fine art, Painting instruction |

Walt Disney knew he had much to learn from children’s books and children’s book art (just as children’s book illustrators know they have much to learn from 80 years worth of Disney animators.) Dumbo...

Trouble in imagination paradise

Posted by Mark Mitchell | Apr 30, 2012 | Children's book fine art, Illustration course |

Not a kind portrayal of the creator of Mickey Mouse, with a fascinating comparison between Disney with his studio — and J. Edgar Hoover with his F.B.I. Seething over the strike by most of his animators in the 1940s, he...

A high school dropout and a mediocre cartoonist

Posted by Mark Mitchell | Apr 25, 2012 | Other media |

Children’s book illustrators — draw your pets. That’s our message for today. He really did have a pet mouse while working at Laugh-O-Gram, his commercial animation studio in Kansas City. And when Universal...