Tyrus Wong spent three years at Disney, more than two decades at Warner Bros., and decades more designing Christmas cards and flying handmade kites on a Santa Monica beach. Across all of it runs one idea, drawn from Chinese landscape painting: you do not have to show everything. A forest can be a haze of colour with one patch of light; a city can be a few vertical marks. For designers, Tyrus Wong shows how much work a blank area can do.
His work is protected by copyright, and the Met, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Cleveland Museum of Art hold nothing by him flagged public domain or CC0. This guide describes his work in text only; none of it is free to use. For historic images cleared for reuse, browse the MGD museum inspiration collection.
Who was Tyrus Wong?
He was born on 25 October 1910 in Guangdong province in southern China, according to his Disney Legends biography and other accounts; the Walt Disney Family Museum describes his birthplace as Canton. As a boy he travelled to the United States with his father, around 1919 or 1920 (The Henry Ford gives both years in different texts). He entered the country as a “paper son,” under an assumed family identity, a route many Chinese migrants used under the Chinese Exclusion laws, and accounts of his life place his arrival at the Angel Island immigration station in San Francisco Bay.
According to The Henry Ford, his father encouraged his drawing and taught him to paint and to write calligraphy with a brush. Teachers in Pasadena noticed his talent and he won a summer scholarship to the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, then left junior high to study there full time, working odd jobs at the school to cover tuition. Otis lists him as a 1932 alumnus; other accounts give 1930.
In the late 1930s he worked for the Depression-era Federal Art Project, according to PBS and the journal Panorama. He died at his home in Sunland, Los Angeles, on 30 December 2016, aged 106, as reported in his obituaries and by Disney.
A dated outline of the career
- 1938–1941: Disney. He joined the studio as an inbetweener, drawing the frames between the key poses. While Bambi was in pre-production he painted small landscapes with deer, and their mood was adopted for the film. He left Disney in 1941, before the film’s release.
- 1942: Bambi released. His contribution was not widely credited at the time; Disney named him a Disney Legend in 2001.
- 1942 to the late 1960s: Warner Bros. As a production illustrator he painted scenes from screenplays to plan sets, lighting and camera angles. PBS and other accounts list Rebel Without a Cause and The Wild Bunch among the films he worked on, across a tenure usually given as about 26 years.
- 1950s–1970s: greeting cards. He designed Christmas cards for Hallmark, California Artists and Duncan McIntosh. According to The Henry Ford, California Artists named him its Artist of the Year in 1955.
- Retirement: kites. He built and flew elaborate kites on the beach north of the Santa Monica Pier.
- 2013–2015: retrospective. The Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco showed Water to Paper, Paint to Sky: The Art of Tyrus Wong from August 2013 to February 2014, with more than 150 works including paintings, cards, painted scarves and kites. A version travelled to the Museum of Chinese in America in New York in 2015.
- 2017: documentary. Pamela Tom’s film Tyrus aired on PBS American Masters on 8 September 2017.
What to look at in the Bambi paintings
Suggestion, not description. Accounts of the production describe early Bambi backgrounds as heavily detailed, with every leaf and bark texture drawn in, which made the animated animals hard to read. Wong’s paintings went the other way. They draw on Song dynasty landscape painting, which conveyed mountains, mist and trees with very few strokes. The Disney Family Museum’s Michael Labrie, quoted by Voice of America, called his vision for Bambi the polar opposite of the exquisite detail of Snow White.
Room for the characters. One account of the production says Wong argued that the earlier artwork was too detailed to let the animals stand out. The fix was hierarchy: keep the setting soft and let the moving figures carry the sharpest edges and strongest contrast. Detail goes only where the eye should go.
Atmosphere over outline. His paintings were made in watercolour and pastel, media that blend and blur easily. Accounts of the film describe his aim as creating the feeling of the forest rather than an inventory of it. Mist and soft edges do the framing, so the picture reads as a mood before it reads as a place.
Mood from a few tones. The Song approach he admired relies on gradations of a few tones rather than many hues. That restraint transfers directly to colour design: a narrow range of related values, with contrast held back for the focal point.
Technique: brush, wash and the film frame
Wong’s tools crossed two traditions. From his father and from Chinese painting he took the loaded brush, the confident single stroke and the habit of leaving paper bare. From Otis and the studio system he took Western perspective, atmospheric depth and the demands of cinema: a background has to support moving characters, hold up for several seconds on screen and match the next shot.
At Warner Bros. the work changed scale. A production illustration is a planning tool, painted quickly from a script so directors and art directors can see a set and its lighting before anything is built. These paintings had to read at a glance, which rewards the same economy as his Bambi work.
His kites show the same principles in three dimensions. A CBS photo essay records a butterfly kite of about 1995 in bamboo, silk thread and tissue paper painted with watercolour, and a centipede kite of about 1990 in wire, ripstop nylon and rattan. LAist describes centipedes with many segments that needed several helpers to launch: a modular system built to move.
Christmas cards: small formats, big space
Greeting cards are a demanding format: a few inches of printed paper that must read across a room on a mantelpiece. The Henry Ford holds a 1955 card for California Artists, Enchanted Forest, about 7¼ by 3¾ inches, in which tiny figures of Joseph and Mary travel through a forest of tall pink and purple trees. The scale contrast does all the storytelling. A 1963 design for Duncan McIntosh is titled Festive City.
According to Smithsonian magazine, Hallmark promoted his cards for their “delicacy of line and color that is in the ancient tradition of the east,” and The Henry Ford reports that Duncan McIntosh called him “America’s favorite Christmas card designer.” He continued to design cards into the 1970s. The tall, narrow format of a card like Enchanted Forest suits its tall trees: the page shape is part of the idea.
For a later approach to stylised, vertical forests in animation, compare Eyvind Earle, whose hard-edged trees took Disney backgrounds in another direction; for flat, colour-led concept art from the same studio, see Mary Blair.
How designers can borrow from Tyrus Wong
- Edit the background first. Before adding detail, ask what the viewer needs to read. Reduce secondary areas to soft shapes and keep sharp edges for the subject.
- Build a close-value palette. Pick three or four related tones and one warm accent for light. Test it with the colour palette generator and check that the accent still stands out in greyscale.
- Exaggerate scale. Tiny figures against tall forms, as in Enchanted Forest, create wonder without extra elements.
- Let the format lead. Tall cards, narrow posters and scrolling mobile screens all reward vertical compositions.
- Study the source tradition. Look at historic Chinese art and the Chinese art theme in the museum collection for brush economy, mist and empty space, using only works cleared for reuse.
Frequently asked questions
Who was Tyrus Wong?
Tyrus Wong (1910–2016) was a Chinese American artist born in Guangdong province who came to the United States as a child. He painted the concept art that shaped the look of Disney’s Bambi, worked for about 26 years as a production illustrator at Warner Bros., designed Christmas cards and made kites.
What did Tyrus Wong do on Bambi?
While working as an inbetweener at Disney, he painted small atmospheric landscapes with deer, inspired by Song dynasty painting. Their soft, suggestive style replaced a more detailed approach and set the mood of the film’s backgrounds. He left the studio in 1941, and the film came out in 1942.
Is Tyrus Wong’s work public domain?
No. His paintings, film art, cards and kites are protected by copyright, and none of his work is flagged public domain or CC0 by the Met, the Art Institute of Chicago or the Cleveland Museum of Art.
What can designers learn from Tyrus Wong?
Restraint. Suggest settings with a few soft shapes, keep detail and contrast for the focal point, work in a limited palette with one accent of light, and use scale and empty space to create mood.
