This sheet from 1934 consists of preliminary drawings by Tom Wood for publicity art. For each publicity drawing, Wood, unlike the other two major Disney publicity artists (who both worked up every image on a single sheet of paper), would prepare studies, first of individual figures and then groups of figures within the composition. This sheet has a clear image of the Three Little Pigs from the 1934 sequel, The Big Bad Wolf. Next to the pigs is an erased but still visible image of Donald Duck as he first appeared in the 1934 Silly Symphony, The Wise Little Hen -- which just happened to be the Silly Symphony that was made immediately before The Big Bad Wolf. It seems likely that Wood reused the piece of paper which only had a smallish image of a duck. Since the publicity art was prepared before animation began on each cartoon, this drawing of Donald Duck would have been drawn earlier than any animation drawing of Donald (the only existing example of which, to my knowledge, is in my collection). The pencil publicity drawing study would also pre-date the only known inked publicity drawing of Donald, which was recently offered at auction). The only images of Donald from the Wise Little Hen that would have been drawn before this publicity drawing would have been storyboards and perhaps some character development drawing, but none of these still exist to my knowledge. The only other extant drawing of Donald that might be earlier is a layout drawing of Donald dancing on his ship in the Disney archives. The two existing original model sheet drawings of Donald from the Wise Little Hen (one of which is of questoinable authenticity in my opinion), could also be slightly earlier, but this is far from certain.
