Nixon Galloway's Disney On Parade Illustrations

Southern California artist Nixon Galloway is best known for his paintings of historic aircraft, but throughout his career he freelanced as an illustrator for many corporations, from NASA to Disney.  In 1973, Galloway painted the front and back covers for the souvenir program of the live Disney On Parade touring stage show.  

 These boards are simply beautiful examples of water-based gouache illustration. Galloway used the margins of his boards for mixing colors.  


This tissue overlay explains to the layout department how to composite the various art and type elements to create the final cover for the program.

The back cover scene is my favorite, with the chimney sweeps from Mary Poppins popping out in bursts of magical smoke. 

Galloway, whose paintings have been exhibited at the Smithsonian and the White House, passed away in 2003, just two days after his 76th birthday.

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In the summer of 1974, when I was 8, our family saw Disney On Parade on its stop in Phoenix, Arizona.  (Yes, I still have my ticket stub!)  During intermission, my Dad bought us copies of the program with Galloway's bright cover artwork (and yep, I still got that, too...)

As for the show itself, the part I remember best is a comedy number performed by the relatively new Country Bears, and wondering why the three bears doing dangerous tricks on the trapeze had "real people hands" instead of paws.

Some of the costumed characters seemed pretty wild to me at the time --and truthfully, they still do.

For more images from the show - including the most alien-looking Jiminy Cricket you'll ever see - check out my Flickr Gallery.

SpacePotato's blog has posted a tribute to the 40th anniversary of the Disney On Parade touring shows, as well as a fine collection of images on his Flickr site!