Mickey Art

I am very fortunate that I live with an artist, my husband Simon, which has meant over the years that my knowledge and appreciation of all things 'arty' has considerably improved.

No visit to WDW is complete without a visit to the 'The Art of Disney' at Downtown Disney Marketplace; a chance for Simon to become awestruck by all the fabulous art and me to wish I had the money to spend on figurines and other collectibles.

Simon can always be found 'doodling' and when work allows, loves nothing more than creating art of all kinds - have a look at his website for the range of work he produces www.simonphipps.com.  Back in November of 2010 Simon was spending a quiet Sunday afternoon 'doodling' away drawing Mickey as various Halloween monsters in different styles - they were amazing.  I happened to comment that he should do some more....so Simon issued me a challenge 'if you can give me a theme I'll draw you a Mickey a day for a year' and so began '365 Mickeys'.

We had a whole year of 'so darling, what's todays Mickey then?' which to start off with was quite easy and straightforward; simply pick what had happened that day a birthday, karate lesson, broken boiler, girl's night out and off Simon would go and produce a piece of art.  But as the year went on it became apparent that the usual day-to-day stuff wouldn't be enough to keep us (sorry Simon!) going.  So the latter months took on themes - movie month, classic Disney character month, Halloween monster month as well as mini themes like 'superheroes' or limiting the colour palette.

Part way through the year I said 'you really ought to do something with these' - it seemed such a shame that the only people to see this growing collection of art were family and close friends, so Simon decided to dedicate part of his website to the project - 365 Mickeys - please take the time to have a look I promise it will be well worth your while.

Me and all 365 Mickeys!

365 Mickeys has brought a great amount of pleasure to both Simon and I, especially when seeing the response of someone looking through the art for the first time, and in turn has enabled Simon to use his powers for good!  In September of 2011 he was approached by the lovely team at WDW Radio Podcast to produce a piece of artwork based on the WDW Radio Dream Team Project logo that would then be auctioned off on 1st October 2011 as part of their marathon 40-hour live broadcast from WDW to celebrate its 40th anniversary.  All proceeds from the event, which totalled near $17,000, went to support the Make A Wish Foundation.

'Disney Dreams'

And so to September 2012 and Simon has been approached once again to help out the WDW Radio Dream Team Project to produce a piece of artwork to mark the 30th anniversary of EPCOT, once again the artwork will be auctioned off over the weekend of 28th - 30th September 2012 with all money raised going again to the Make A Wish Foundation.  What do you think?

'Mickey as Dreamfinder with Figment'

Pretty good eh?!!