Glen Keane draws Ariel and Pocahontas

Glen Keane is probably the most influential artist in my life, I could watch him draw forever. I had grown up with his work for many years without knowing who he was but my first major discovery of him as an artist was when I first saw his expression sheets for Rapunzel in the movie Tangled. From then on I think Glen became an artist I always had in the back on my mind. Expression sheets have always interested me since then, something about how they make a drawn character feel alive instead of just lines on a paper.

It wasn’t until a few years later when I was feeling unsure about my artistic career, I was actually experiencing my first significant success, landing a good artist job but instead of being happy I and was overall feeling very uncertain about if this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, I’d spent so long grinding to get good enough I hadn’t taken a moment to go up for air and make sure I was swimming in the right direction.

 It was during this time I decided to really get reflective about the art I love and to try understand why I like it and to pursue that, because if I’m going to dedicate my life to getting better at making art, it’s should be the art I love. During this time of introspection I realised it was the work of Glen Keane that inspired me the most, got me the most excited to pick up a pencil. 

It was also around this time that I actually started looking up the artist himself and watch videos or listen to podcasts of him talking about his art. This was another major moment that solidified Glen as a favourite artist of mine, The way he talks about art, with such sincerity and enthusiasm, it was so inspiring, It made me want to be that kind of artist.

Glen with one of his latest character’s Fei Fei

Glen working on Beauty and the Beast

Some photos of a young Glen, I believe working on Fox and the Hound.

There are a few amazing videos of Glen doing drawing demos, I’m sure I’ll share more in the future. But this is a nice one from right around the time of Pocahontas, I really love to see the comparison between the 2 head shapes. Glen draws lines with such a sense of calligraphy. It’s really informative to see how much he does in the way of construction before jumping into the features, he gets the rough head shape, defines a line for where he sits the bottom of the eyes and that’s about it.