Fievel Reunites with his Family (“An American Tail” (1986))

It’s another new watercolor artwork in today’s post in the mid-week of the month! It’s not a Disney fan art, not like the last one I’ve already shared last week. We are back into the animation world of Don Bluth. I haven’t been doing any more fan art pieces of his animated films, since the last time I worked on. It was a watercolor fan art of his first film, The Secret of NIMH (1982). It’s an illustration of a tender scene of Mrs. Brisby feeding her younger son, Timothy his medicine, with the song “Flying Dreams”. I first shared it back in 2021 and shared it again as a Watercolor of the Month, so if you haven’t seen it, you can find it in the link at the end of this topic here.

Today, you’re going to see my very first fan artwork on one of Don Bluth’s best animated movies, An American Tail (1986). Not only it’s my very first An American Tail fan art I ever did, but this also happens to be the second Don Bluth movie to do a fan art of it, as well as a third Don Bluth fan art piece, after the last Secret of NIMH watercolor fan art from 2021.

Drawn and painted in watercolor at 12 x 9 in a horizontal view, it illustrates a very sweet and happy ending of Fievel Mousekawitz reuniting with his family, after a long search for finding them through his adventures somewhere in New York City. He is tenderly embraced with Papa and Mama Mousekawitz and his sister Tanya, along with his friends Tiger the cat, Tony, Bridget, and Madam Mouseheimer.

An American Tail is one of Don Bluth’s best works to direct and produce, and this became the first animated film to be associated with Steven Spielberg, released in 1986. The movie was made at Sullivan Bluth Studios in Ireland, where many other of Don Bluth’s films were made. It was a successful animated film to be a hit in the box office, beating out Disney’s The Great Mouse Detective (1986), which came out the same year as this movie. Of course, it even has a sequel called An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991), five years later.

I never grew up watching this film, but I remember watching it on TV, when I was a young teenager. I might’ve seen it on HBO, and I’m pretty sure that I have seen the sequel, Fievel Goes West on YouTube. I know that the sequel features actor Jimmy Stewart voicing one of the characters, and I think it was his final film before retiring from acting and his death in 1997. The live-action movies I have seen Jimmy Stewart in were couple of Alfred Hitchcock’s films, such as Rear Window (1954) and Vertigo (1958). Rear Window is an amazing movie, and highly recommended it.

The first Don Bluth movie I remember watching it was All Dogs go to Heaven (1989). At that time, I didn’t know who Bluth is, until I discovered him from watching one of his brilliant animation tutorials on YouTube, when I was nineteen. His tutorials on drawing characters really helped me on approving my drawing technique, much better than how I draw cartoons at a young age. Bluth would start off by lighting sketching a character in different shapes, and then, he details it later on. Artists or animators, if you really want to learn how to approve your drawing techniques in animation, please check out Don Bluth’s tutorials on YouTube.

As I’ve gotten older, I watched An American Tail again. Twice this year. And I started to appreciate it. It also has an interesting history of it, which I recommended you check out a YouTube clip of a Q&A section from GalaxyCon, featuring actors Phillip Glasser (Fievel), Neil Ross (Honest John), and Pat Musick (Tony), and executive producers Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy, who also worked as an animator for the film.

My favorite song is “There Are No Cats in America”.

Fun fact: The main character, Fievel was actually named after Steven Spielberg’s grandfather who had immigrated to America from Russia, where the Mousekawitzs were from.

After having the appreciation of this film as an adult now, it became one of my favorite Don Bluth movies, and I think that appreciation somehow led me to do this watercolor fan art. I did enjoy working on it, and I hope you’ll find this artwork enjoyable as much as watching the film, for those who have grown up with it.

Fievel and Family Drawing 1 (Sketching and Cleaning Up)

I started working on my very first An American Tail fan art in early-April, which was on a Friday morning or afternoon. The first step of working on this project was lightly pencil sketching the Mousekawitzs and background. Then again, it’s the Don Bluth drawing technique that helped me to draw better. Along with it, I have to look up screenshot images of the reunion scene from the film to help me learn how to draw Fievel, Papa and Mama Mousekawitz, and Tanya, and the hat down on the bottom, which is part of the background.

Once the sketching was finished, I added four strips of tape around, so it’ll create like a frame-like border around the artwork. And with that, I can go ahead and clean up the pencil outlines and turn them into a nice and smooth black line. Whenever that part of the job was done, I take an eraser and erased the entire pencil outlines.

Fievel and Family Drawing 2 (Coloring and Painting Process)

Second job of working this fun project is the coloring process, using my set of watercolor pencils, and painting the colors into a watercolor medium. I begin working on the coloring process in a couple of days later.

I colored both the Mousekawitzs and background, but the only thing I didn’t color with the watercolor pencil sets was Mama Mousekawitz’s skirt. I end up using a dark brown acrylic paint to color it up, before I can paint the rest of the drawing in watercolor.

Fievel and Family Drawing 3 (Detailing the Hat Background)

A week later, I went back to work more on this drawing, and so, the third process was adding details onto the drawing, such as shading. What helped was using a black acrylic paint to paint the shadows on either a background or character, which depends on the project.

I do have a black watercolor pencil, but I couldn’t use it because it’s so small, after it’s has been shaven down with the sharpener so many times. Thankfully, I have a good experience of using acrylic paint, and you can even use it for watercolor painting, just by mixing it acrylic paint, any color you want, and water together, and it’ll create a watercolor brushstroke.

Not only did I used black acrylic paint, I also used dark brown acrylic paint to paint the dark shadows on the hat, including adding the patterns around it.

Fievel and Family Drawing 4 (Adding Sparkles and Finished)

And finally, the last thing to work on was adding beautiful white sparkles on the drawing. Besides Disney, I think Don Bluth was really talented on animating sparkles by adding light on the bottom of the cel, a plastic sheet to ink and paint the characters, to create a realistic light and glow.

Once again, went back to acrylic paint! By using a white acrylic paint to paint the effect, while using one of the screenshot images for reference to capture the Don Bluth magic ✨

It was finished on April 12th, 2024.

This was a fun animated fan art project, and I’m happy I got the chance to do my very first An American Tail watercolor fan art, so I hope you all enjoyed it.

What are your thoughts on An American Tail? And do you prefer this movie, or The Secret of NIMH?

Next up is another new Disney watercolor fan art, and it is from a Disney classic, Fantasia (1940). This is my second Fantasia fan art, and it illustrates a blue dewdrop fairy in the ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’ scene from The Nutcracker Suite, the second segment in the film, which is one of my favorite segments in Fantasia.

If you haven’t seen my previous Disney watercolor fan art from last week, on Little Girl Embraces Quasimodo from Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), please check it out here on The Autistic Animator’s Desk.

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