Fantasia: Elephant Ballet

While drawings often serve as preparations for other drawings, paintings, or prints, the works in this case were preparatory for a book, a magazine, and a film. This is a preliminary sketch for part of the "Dance of the Hours" sequence in the 1940 film Fantasia in which elephants enter the scene in the early evening, following previous segments by ostriches and hippos. The haughty expressions and tip-toe postures of the elephants add a note of humor to the forward motion of the fluid, energetic lines.