Search For Treasures

Monday, August 23, 2010

A Bit On Manuel Gonzales

Today I am here to talk about one of the artists whose work I posted about earlier. I think it's important that we learn more about the artists who bring the classic Disney characters to life on the comic book page.

Today, it's Manuel Gonzales.

Manuel Gonzales is a Spanish-born artist (born 3/3/1913) who started out as a painter in his native land. He migrated to the United States in the mid-1930s, where he got a job as a staff artist at the Walt Disney Studios in 1936. In 1938, he was given the job of drawing the Mickey Mouse Sunday page when Floyd Gottfredson left it to work exclusively on the dailies.

On the Sunday pages, Gonzales drew the daily life adventures of Mickey and friends, in stark contrast to the grand adventures of Gottfredson's dailies. It seems to adhere closer to the animated shorts. He continued to draw them until his retirement in 1981.

Along with this, he illustrated the newspaper comics versions of such Disney classics as Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Pan. He inked a few daily strips of Donald Duck for Al Taliaferro and illustrated a few Disney books for Golden Press and Whitman Publishing.

Manuel Gonzales died in March of 1993.


His artwork is solid and well-drawn, although sometimes his Mickey is a little squat without much on that animated verve of the cartoon Mickey.


His style is somewhat similar to Paul Murry (responsible for the work above), although much more appealing and better drawn than Murry's.


His version of Pluto is wonderful. Pluto is cute and appealing, and it looks solid and three-dimensional.

A good solid artist whose work should be appreciated.

Until Next Time
Happy Trails

3 comments:

Micara said...

You notice things that I would never think of noticing! I admire your artistic eye. That's why I like reading your blog so much! :)

<3
Michele

Steven Hartley said...

I've never heard of the artist but he seems to have done a good job!

Steven Hartley said...

There's another artist who I think is great and illustrated Donald Duck and that's Frank Grundeen who started as an animator at Disney (worked on Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo and Bambi), and although he is a mystery man.

But his comics of Donald Duck are available on the Internet!