(upbeat music) - Hello, early learners.

And welcome back to the art room.

It's me Mrs. Readwright.

I told you yesterday, that today we were going to be meeting Mary Blair.

Now, if you've ever been to Disneyland, this will be an exciting artist to learn about, but let's start off with our hello song by singing.

Oh, the duck says quack and all the animal sounds until we finally say, did I say hello?

And it goes like this.

♪ Oh, the duck says, quack ♪ ♪ And the cow says moo ♪ ♪ And the old red rooster says, cock-a-doodle-doo ♪ ♪ The Sheep says, baa ♪ ♪ And the cat says meow ♪ ♪ And I say, good morning when I see you ♪ And here I am with my cup of coffee, happy as can be.

All right, boys and girls, here is what the art we're working on today, kind of is from the book.

It is to look like the Small World ride.

And the buildings none of them are just black and white.

Lots of color, lots of different roof lines.

This one looks like it has a leaf as its roof.

This one looks like it might be a clock tower with a, looks like a princess cap on top.

This one has a triangle and a sphere.

This one has two spheres and an arrowhead.

This one has like a triangle but you can tell it's shaded.

So it's like a dome and it has two circles.

This one has a triangle roof, triangle, triangle triangle.

This one kind of reminds me of the Taj Mahal, how it kind of has curve sides up to a point.

So you'll be thinking about what kind of roofs you want to make.

Look, this one looks kind of like a stair step.

You can make your roof any way you'd like.

This one's kind of like a pagoda and it circles out because a Small World is supposed to represent all kinds of buildings and all kinds of lands and all kinds of people.

And here's our artist, Mary Blair.

She was young here and she was an artist.

And you can see some of her art materials here.

And we have a great book that we're reading today called, "Pocket Full of Colors: The Magical World of Mary Blair, Disney Artist Extraordinaire."

If you want to say someone is really special, you say extraordinaire.

That means extraordinarily wonderful.

She's an extraordinaire.

All right, boys and girls, let's take a look at our book for today.

I have all these words.

I was going to tell you all about her, but all of it is inside the book.

"Pocket Full of Colors: The Magical World of Mary Blair, Artist Extraordinaire."

And they put her right on the cover and here's the world to help you remember that It's a Small world, is what we're talking about.

And look inside.

We'll be doing all kinds of patterns.

Look at these and see if there are any that you think you want to put on the outside of your buildings, because not only is it a little puzzle, it's an exercise in pattern and design and geometry and geometry is a study of shapes.

So we are gonna talk about different shapes and all kinds of things.

And I have my construction paper box here next to me, ready to go.

It's called "Pocket Full of Colors: The Magical World of Mary Blair."

And they even have a coffee cup being used as her water dish.

And I love how the stories go back to when the artist was a child, and this one is no exception.

"Under the wide blue sky on a red dirt road.

There lived a little girl named Mary.

Other children collected marbles or dolls, but Mary collected colors of every shade and every hue.

One day Mary's parents announced that they were moving out West.

As she waved goodbye to the yellow house.

Mary tucked her friend Lemon in her pocket.

Mary would miss the happy home, but she had new colors to collect."

And you can see where she lived near the countryside.

Lots of animals and old time cars.

That means that she wasn't born yesterday, 'cause our cars don't look like that.

And they even tied their suitcases on top.

"Driving across the sun, bleached desert, Mary spied russet," which is a kind of brown.

"Taupe," which is like a gray brown.

"And sienna," which is kind of a rusty brown.

"When she arrived in California, she glimpsed the azure ocean and found groves of golden fruit dripping from viridian trees."

And viridian is a green.

"In the city, she discovered steel gray buildings and mauve-tinted skies."

If these are the skies, what color is mauve?

kind of pinky.

And steel gray buildings?

All below.

"Mary opened her sketchbook.

She mixed her paints.

She would save these shades for just the right time."

Because once you mix colors, boys and girls, you will remember the combination that you made it.

I know one time I made a green that I love to make the color of frogs that color and it took green and brown and a little bit of yellow.

And so I always remember it because it's kind of like this color that Mary painted on her sketchbook.

And sometimes if you want to remember colors, just write down what colors you did.

So I might have put a dot of the regular green, a dot of the brown and a dot of the yellow and then mix them together and show how I made that color.

That's what artists do.

They test out their colors.

"When she was older, Mary went to art school and she met Lee.

He showed her rosy, pink and blushing red.

She kept those colors in her heart."

Oh, those are the colors of like a valentine and love.

Oh, they're holding hands.

Hmm, Lee must be important to her.

Look what they're drawing.

A lady stands there.

It's called a figure drawing.

A person stands or sits and people draw them and you get better and better.

It's kind of hard to draw the human body, unless you get used to trying how long the body needs to be, how long the arms are and how far down they go.

Who do you think that is?

After she yelled hands with them, I thought she would be seeing him more and more.

So, "Together, Mary and Lee painted rainbows, but it was the Great Depression."

And the Great Depression was a time when something happened to the money and people didn't have money and people were working and they couldn't find work and then everyone had to stand in line to get a loaf of bread.

And there were people that had money, but a lot of people were living in the Great Depression and people were poor and no one was buying rainbows, except one place.

And what place do you think is buying rainbows?

Mary landed a job at Walt Disney Studios.

One of the first women ever to be hired, finally, a place for her colors to run and dance and play as they pleased."

And there's the Hollywood sign and over it is the rainbow.

But what color is that rainbow?

Gray, gray, gray and black, and the building was kind of quiet and the trees are kind of quiet, no color.

And here's Walt Disney and he's waving her in and it has signs to where to go, go to Mickey Street or Animation.

It has all the ways to get around Disneyland.

Look in this room.

How many women do you see?

Just Mary, oh, no.

There's one lady that's sat at the typewriter, but all the rest of the workers are artists there.

And let's find out what this says.

"But on her first day of work, the men in charge didn't wanna talk about or cerulean or celadon or cerise.

They were only interested in black and white."

Look at all the art in the frames it's all black and white, all the papers they're holding, black and white.

"She tried, but her colors were too vivid, too wild.

And when Mary turned in her work, all her ideas were rejected."

And that means sent away.

Take your idea, take it away.

"Twinkling emerald skies.

The men turned them blue.

Magenta horses that could fly.

The men made them brown and put them in a stable.

Peach giraffes with tangerine spots?

Her bosses just shook their heads.

They didn't know what to make of her art."

Not a friendly face there, "But Walt, Walt Disney, the man who owned the company did know what to make of her work.

He loved her colors so much, he asked Mary to join him on a trip to South America, to meet some new colors."

Wow.

"Mary delighted in the colors of Brazil, Argentina and Peru, she worked hard to capture the vibrant scenery and when it was time to go home, Mary's bags burst with fuchsia, teal, aquamarine, indigo, lime green and banana yellow."

Don't you love how Mary collects her colors?

"After Mary returned to Disney her concept art for the studio's upcoming films, grew even more adventurous as she drew upon the eye popping shades that she discovered in South America.

Oh Cinderella, she needed a teal pumpkin coach.

The caterpillar in "Alice in Wonderland" oh, could only be aquamarine.

And the mermaid in "Peter Pan," simply had to be lime green.

This time some of Mary's ideas were accepted, but most of her art was still considered too modern, too abstract and just not right.

Mary's colors encouraged her to leave the men with their black lines and strict rules and so she did."

Where will she go?

"Mary quickly found new work, designing advertisements, illustrating picture books for children and creating sets for plays and television commercials.

And she enjoyed the freedom of these new jobs, but Mary missed Walt and then one day out of the blue."

That means just out of nowhere.

"Her phone rang, it was Walt.

'Mary I have a project for you.

I need your wild and beautiful colors,' his voice boomed.

Walt explained his idea was going to be building a magical ride that would teach people about cultures from around the world.

And the ride had to be full of color, which meant there was only one person for that job.

'Mary, you know about colors, I've never even heard of before.'

And Mary smiled and then she frowned as she remembered the rules and the lines and the men in charge who didn't understand her colors or her style of art.

There was only one way to answer Walt Disney, when he asked.

'Yes,' said Mary, but her yes came with a condition.

This time Mary wanted to be the one in charge and Walt welcomed her board.

He made her in charge.

Mary's paint seemed to sparkle when she hung up the phone, she had never been to places like China or Morocco or Kathmandu but her colors had.

So sitting down to work, she squeezed out dabs of paint, lemon yellow, aquamarine, azure, mauve, taupe, tangerine, russet, sienna and steel gray, celadon, cerulean, cerise, magenta, teal, indigo, and emerald shined from her palette.

And when she picked up her brush, the colors Mary had so carefully collected all her life, took a trip around the globe."

I'm getting ideas of how I'm going to decorate my buildings.

"And when the work was done and the ride opened, people gasp in awe.

It's a Small World, was a sensation."

Look at all these buildings and all the shapes and colors.

Think of those when you want to make your buildings for our puzzle.

And when it was Mary's turn to take the ride.

She leaned back in the boat and let her colors wash over her.

It was a world of laughter, a world of smiles and color, color, color, everywhere.

This at last was Mary's world.

Boys and girls.

Let me grab my table and put it up on my lap and we'll start our puzzle.

(indistinct) Alrighty, here was my test one.

It's just a little piece of cardboard, but look at the piece of cardboard I brought to make it with you.

If you don't have cardboard, remember, you can just cut.

- [Riley] (indistinct) I'm sorry.

Are you forgetting me?

- All right.

(Riley yawns) - Why?

- 9:52.

I don't know what I could.

(Mrs. Readwright laughs) I tried to not make.

- It's exactly 10:10.

- Okay, all good.

- I knew.

- Riley.

- [Riley] Oh, my goodness.

- That's what it did the first time.

Thunder, thunder, dump.

- All right.

- Okay.

- I'll just walk away.

- Yeah, get it outta here.

(Riley yawns) - [Riley] We had here originally, 'cause we didn't have enough room on this end.

Supposed to come on here.

- Oh I see.

Now it's done to?

- [Riley] It's done twice.

- Yes.

- [Riley] Oh, there's a screw in here (indistinct).

- Did you just hurt yourself?

- [Riley] No.

- Okay.

- [Riley] Just found it.

- I was waiting for you.

At least it didn't happen during the story.

- [Riley] Yeah.

- (indistinct).

- [Riley] It happened literally right as you ended.

- I know.

I was just putting the book up and I thought, oh my word, are you gonna try and prop it again?

- [Riley] Nope.

- Throwing it out in the parking lot.

All right.

- [Riley] I don't know if, this thing is just too light, but (indistinct).

- You would think with that, gosh, with that log.

- [Riley] I do.

- I know.

- All right, well that's fun.

(table creaking) All right and we'll start from 10.

- Do you want me to be putting the book over on the thing?

'Cause since I went like this.

(Mrs. Readwright laughs) Timber.

Or just put it here.

- [Riley] We'll start with you putting the book back.

- Okay.

I'll have to put my table back too?

- [Riley] I'll cut.

- I'll cut where you (indistinct).

- Okay, so I'll put this here.

Okay.

- [Riley] Resume from right there.

- All right, sir.

- [Riley] Stupid.

- Did you say stay with me?

- [Riley] I just said stupid.

- There you go.

- All right.

- Ready?

- Yes.

- [Riley] Five.

- So that was "Pocket Full of Colors," what a great book about Mary Blair.

All right, let's start our project.

Let me get my table up and show you my sample project.

And I'll teach you how I did it.

This is not in any shape or form finished, but I have two pieces of cardboard and here are my little puzzle shapes.

And I know that one goes in there 'cause that one's narrower and this one's wider and I'm just made a little puzzle.

So we're gonna make a puzzle together, if you have cardboard.

If you do not just cut and paste some beautiful buildings for Small World and just glue it onto a background paper, any color you'd like.

But for people who want to learn to make a puzzle, this is how it's done.

I watched the high school girl do this.

And she said first and I brought three pairs of scissors, 'cause cardboard hurts my hand when I cut it.

And she said, cut it in half, almost in half.

I think maybe I should draw a little line and I'll draw it like this using a straight edge.

I could use a pencil and a ruler, but since I'm already set up here, I'm just gonna draw it with my scissors across the way.

And it made enough line that I can cut there.

It's kind of a hard piece of cardboard to cut.

You might have to have your grown up cut it boys and girls, 'cause this is super hard.

But my piece of cardboard was a piece of cardboard that was used to house a bicycle.

When you try and take it across the country on an airplane.

So you want it really super thick so that it will not bend your bike in the airplane.

Ooh, boys and girls always cut away from you 'cause these scissors are sharp.

I'm bending my cardboard a little bit, but that's okay 'cause it will go back together when I glue it.

Oh, can you hear how hard now?

See this is why I get another pair of scissors 'cause where I held that one.

It hurt my hand.

So now with another pair of scissors, it'll hurt my hand in a different place and you can make yours much smaller.

That's why I made that other one small.

Now you can see one of my pieces is bigger than the other.

See how it has that much of place up here.

That's so that I can put my sky of my building on there.

So now on the smaller piece, the larger piece I can just set aside.

I don't wanna get it confused and think I'm cutting it and I'm going to cut my building shapes and I'm gonna think I'm gonna make three of them.

You can draw yours before you cut.

I'm just cutting it 'cause it's gonna just be like a rectangle.

So I'm gonna make this one go down, down and this again, you might have to have your family, make this cut for you 'cause it is super strong.

My cardboard is super strong and the corrugated part, which means the little waffly part that there's inside there.

It's easier to cut up and down, but it's harder to cut across.

So there's one of my buildings.

Maybe I'll just do two buildings for right now and finish it up later.

Ooh, this is so hard.

I'm gonna make this one a fat building or wide building.

I know some people think fat is a mean word.

So probably I shouldn't call my cardboard fat.

Get this on here.

Ooh, there we go.

I might even bend it a little and see if I that's easier to cut.

I did that earlier on a piece and it did make it a little easier to cut 'cause it makes a little fold in that part of the cardboard.

Okay, now I have two puzzle pieces and now is the fun part of decorating the buildings.

Now you have to make sure it's in there 'cause this isn't even, and if I try and put it in this way, it won't fit.

So I'm gonna leave it in its spot first to choose my colors.

I'm going to make my first building.

I think I'll make it purple and I'm going to cover it.

Now here's the part that I think is kind of nice.

I'm going to just do this so that you can see.

I'm gonna put my glue and I had to take the little spout off because you know how when the glue ends up clogging, it's hard to get it to work for you.

I'm gonna use this other piece of cardboard as my smearing tool.

So I put the glue on there and I'm gonna use this one.

Oh, I think I'm doing it on the wrong side.

Do you believe I am?

And then I'll do that.

Dry you little thing, and put this on top and just like other things when I've taught you, when you glue something, then it goes too far.

You just turn it over and snip it off.

If I want my building to be just a rectangle, then this is good.

But if I want it to have a roof shape, I will cut it.

Now I wanna make sure I have the right side in here.

Yes I do.

So watch, I'm going to find about halfway and I'm gonna measure with my thumb and I'll make a little mark there and I will make my roof like this.

There that's good.

It'll be ready to go in there when I do my other part.

Okay, I'm going to get some blue and make this one.

Now I have to dry off the glue that I put on here because, oh no, I did do it the right way.

Good.

I'll put the glue all over this.

Remember, I just meshed it in to make sure I've got it on the right side.

And I have some little pieces of cardboard I can use as my glue spreaders.

I'll use these little roof pieces.

You just move the glue along and it just makes a nice thin layer and I'll put it on the cardboard onto the colored paper 'cause my building is gonna be a blue background.

And now I can see where I need to trim.

First I wanted to make sure my buildings were in the right way before I start decorating them.

'Cause we have to glue this big piece of cardboard onto the background cardboard.

Let me move these over.

Making sure that these pieces do indeed fit.

Yep.

Fits in, fits in.

Now this is the part that you don't want these pieces to get damaged so set them aside.

This is the right side that faces up.

So I want to make sure I make a little mark on there.

I know what I'll do.

I know that I'm going to glue on the back.

So I'm gonna put this back there to say, that's where I wanna make sure the glue is then turn it over.

'Cause I don't wanna put glue all over the wrong side.

So I'm gonna put glue on here.

It's a lot of glue.

People say just a dot, but to get this cardboard to stick together, you need a lot of glue.

Now you can see that this is a big project, that's gonna take many more minutes than what I have today, but I wanted to show you how to do it.

And then you can just decorate your buildings, however you want.

You don't need my help on that.

But learning how to make this puzzle was the part that I thought you would need my help on.

Now make sure there's glue on every bit of it there like that.

And I put my other piece of cardboard down.

I put this one on top and then I put clips around to make sure it'll stick.

And I got these giant clips, but you can use binder clips or other clips that you might have around your house.

Now you will be able to decorate around your buildings later, but I wanna show you what I'm going to do now.

I can make my sky all a different color.

I can paint that sky.

I can put my puzzle pieces in.

There's no glue behind these.

That's just so I can take them out and put them in like that.

Just like my puzzle is ready to go.

And it's just getting itself all dried on there and stuck together with the glue pieces.

I probably could make this part even hold it down.

Now while that's drawing, you decorate your buildings.

You can make any kind of roof that you want.

I made this, one of mine, it was a castle.

So I cut down and down and over, you just add colored shapes to the outside.

You put windows on it.

You can put polkadots.

I even brought my hole punch so that I could put any kind of decorations I might want.

So as you make yours, you get the idea and take a picture of it and send it to me.

'Cause then if you come back and show me that you've made this puzzle that goes together like this and let people build your puzzle.

Here's my little one I'd started and I made some round windows and all of these shapes and I even put a blue background.

Tomorrow we're gonna be learning about a woman who does books in French.

And then when she does it in French, they put it into English and it's about a boy whose eyes are always closed.

I wonder why.

If you want to make the project with me, you will bring some thin cardboard, some paint, paper, scissors, and a brush if you want to paint your things, I'm making a dog like she had in her book.

So I will look for you tomorrow to meet our French artists and her box.

Boys and girls, thank you for joining me today and learning a little about Mary Blair and puzzles.

(upbeat music)