Deadly Sweet

 

Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) is a recognized watershed moment in film history that took the funny little cartoons shown before feature films and made them into an attraction in and of themselves. While Walt Disney did not invent animation, he pushed it beyond the bounds of what was thought possible. It’s hard to imagine nearly 77 years later that many industry insiders predicted the film would be a flop – it’s said even his brother Roy and his wife Lillian urged him to abandon the idea. I’ve read other accounts that Walt inflated the number of naysayers to serve his image as both a visionary and a Hollywood outsider. Regardless, Snow White an incredible hit that set archetypes used in animated films for decades to come: beautiful princess (who sings), handsome, dashing prince (who also sings), adorable helpers for the princess (in later films the Dwarfs were replaced with animals) and the wicked, jealous Stepmother.

Of course in Snow White, the Evil Queen isn’t just your garden-variety wicked stepmother like Lady Tremaine in Cinderella. No, she’s a super powerful sorceress with an all-seeing Enchanted Mirror and a laboratory filled with ancient tomes of horrid spells and insidious magical paraphernalia. You can tell the Disney Animators (the famed Nine Old Men) had a great time working on the Evil Queen; her scenes are full of the most  electrifying drama in the entire film.

Unfortunately, I could only find a version without her dialogue

The scene where she retreats to her dungeon lair after finding the Huntsman has duped her and transforms herself into an ugly old crone before finally creating the poisoned apple has always been my favorite of the film (I’m a sucker for bad guys and dungeon lairs.) But my favorite part of this great scene occurs when the Queen/Crone pulls the apple from the roiling vats of poisonous potion. As the apple  hangs above the cauldron, potion runs off and clearly becomes a leering skull before returning to a gorgeous red apple.

Poison apple spell scene–unfortunately in French

I know I’m not the only one who loves this gag (as the animators would call it.) You need only run an image search on the internet and you find page upon page of of arts, crafts, cakes, shirts and even tattoos using this design. If you visit Walt Disney World’s Downtown Disney, you can get an actual candy poison apple made at The Candy Cauldron (at least around the Halloween season.)

 

Most of the modern depictions of the apple-with-skull show the skull as a bright green color reminiscent of Maleficent’s skin tone – like the apples above. When I created Deadly Sweet, I decided to go with more screen accurate blue-to-whitish liquid. I achieved this effect by starting with a piece of partially transparent white vellum and lightly coloring with blue Prismacolor pencil which I could then blend out. I also used Clear Plastic Nonglas as a substrate for the bubbling steam and the allow the apple to appear suspended in air. I think these techniques worked quite well to achieve the look from the film.

 

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Deadly Sweet is currently for sale in my Etsy Shop for $45