It's an Orange Aardvark!
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Sketches from It's an Orange Aardvark!
In It’s an Orange Aardvark! a carpenter ant drills a series of holes through a wall in his stump in order to see what’s outside. With each hole, a different color of light enters the dark stump; and with each new color, another ant—who’s convinced himself that a hungry aardvark lurks outside—makes more and more ridiculous suggestions to make the new facts fit his original assumption. I tried a number of different ways to illustrate the light flooding into the stump before settling on a series of painted, overlapping concentric circles.
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Early on, I was enamored with the idea of using simple radiating lines of colored chalk. Too busy!
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Next I tried painting paper and cutting it into shapes—more appealing than the chalk, but I felt it was too stark and lifeless.
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Then, I broke the radiating lines into rectangles and the resulting image felt very energetic to me—like light.
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But it wasn't quite right, so one day I tried grouping the rectangles in concentric circles, and that became more contained and satisfying.
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The next step was to forgo the rectangles and portray the colors as a series of intersecting circles. I outlined each shape. It seemed right to me.
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In the end, though, I removed the outlines and the resulting circles of color provided a more suitable and simple background for the ants and their story.
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Of course, that was still just another beginning . . . and I confronted the task of painting a hundred pieces of paper!
