I love studying creation, even so more than the final product, because it reveals the inner workings of a creative process. One can learn a lot from process. It’s something akin to ‘give a man a fish and he eats for a day; teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime’.
Mary Blair was a Disney Studio color stylist who created the initial designs for ‘Children of the World’, which later evolved into Walt Disney’s ‘It’s a Small World’ attractions for the 1964 New York World’s Fair and subsequent park rides. Interestingly, Mary is related to Preston Blair, whose books on cartoon drawing were used by me and many others while learning to draw.
The following are some of Mary Blair’s ‘Small World’ concept sketches (in the rough):
