The Grasshopper and the Ant
… or how society considers creatives.
Hello! It’s Lea again,
I hope you had a great week. If you don’t know me, it's nice to meet you! This is Sunday Spreads, my weekly personal illustration challenge. This week, I wanted to revisit a poem that I learnt by heart in school. It is so ingrained deep in my brain that more than 20 years later, I can still recite it as if I learnt it yesterday. It’s called the Grasshopper and the Ant, from Jean de la Fontaine ( or for the french speaking readers: La Cigalle et la Fourmi. )
Now I haven’t really thought of the texts from La Fontaine since I finished Primary school, but I stumbled upon this beautifully illustrated book ( for only 2 euros!) and it forced me to take a closer look, and how I relate or don’t to his texts as an adult.
Jean de la Fontaine is remembered mostly for his Fables, little poems for children, portraying anthropomorphic animal characters, usually in pairs, put in an opposition with one another. Each of the Fable has a moral to remember, so that since 1668, little french kids can grow up with good ethics. Or so I thought.
The overarching theme in most of the stories is that Cruelty, Mischief and Power will always win. ( yes, the wolf will eat the lamb and that’s it).
“The reason of the strongest is always the best.”
Honestly, re-reading them has been a revelation and of course, La Fontaine was using animals as Metaphors to critique powerful figures of the French Monarchy. Hence the overarching theme of the contrast between Strength and Weakness, and the balance of domination and submission.
Here are some illustrations for the Fables by Gustave Doré.
But one cannot help but try and relate them to today’s world, where individual liberties are being eaten away, misinformation and mistrust are spreading like wildfire all over the internet and I don’t want to live in a world where the reason of the strongest is always the best. I’m sure we can come up with a different moral.
Coming to the Grasshopper and the Ant, the fable that I learnt by heart 20 years ago. What is it about? Okay, here is the poem ( note: the English translation doesn’t do justice to the original prose)
“ The grasshopper and the ant
The grasshopper, having sung
All summer long,
Found herself most destitute,
When the North Wind came.
Not a morsel to her name
Of either fly or worm.
She blurted out her tale of want
To her neighbour Mistress Ant,
And begged her for a loan
Of grain to last her
Till the coming spring.
“I shall pay you”, were her words,
“On insect oath, before the fall,
Interest and principal.”
Mistress Ant is not a lender -
That’s the last thing to reproach her with!
“Tell me how you spent the summer?”
Was what she asked the borrower.
“Night and day, to every comer,
I sang, so please you ma’am.”
“You sang? I’m delighted.
Now off you go and dance!””
To resume, basically, Once upon a time, there was 2 neighbours, a grasshopper who sang all day, and the ant who worked all day. When winter came, the ant was prepared, but not the grasshopper who asked her for help. But the ant refuses and mocks the grasshopper. ( and condemns her to starve).
I was looking for an illustration from Gustave Doré, but turns out that he preferred to turn the insects into human characters. And I think, just looking at the illustration, that Doré must’ve felt bad for the grasshopper as well.
Okay I guess the moral is, work hard kids ! Don’t be like the grasshopper, don’t be a creative. For that is what the grasshopper is. The grasshopper is not lazy, it doesn’t sleep all day, or waste its time doing nothing, No. When asked, the grasshopper says: “Night and day, to anybody who would come, I would sing ”. But the Ant doesn’t value creativity. And once again, the parallel from this 400 year old poem to our hustle obsessed, AI dominated world is tracing itself. So I wanted to rewrite it or at least continue the story after the Ant leaves the Grasshopper to starve.
Okay let’s start drawing.
Here was my first sketch, trying to capture their personalities.
I then tried to go directly to collage, with this sketch as a rough direction.
I wanted to try a different way of assembling/designing so I cut all the parts and then assembled them on an a4 sheet to scan them and put them together digitally.
Here are all the individual parts, and here was the final design in digital :
And I’m just trying to stay objective here but I find them both so cute, I want them to be friends, dammit! Is that too much to ask? Even the Ant honestly, she is the cruel character in the end, but I think there must be a reason of why she acted the way she did. Maybe she was jealous of the attention that the Grasshopper was having? Am I overanalysing a 400 year old children poem ? I don’t think so. Anyway, I did a couple more pages of natural props to give them a background, Rocks, Grass, flowers, etc..
I added all the food on the Ant’s back to show how much she’s been working on her provisions.
And Finally here is the final illustration :
Now I want to continue their story! I have a clear idea on how to bring them back together, but you’ll have to wait next week :) or more I don’t know exactly how long it will take me.
Anyway, before letting you go back out there on the internet, here is the video Timelapse of the digital assembling, if you’re curious:
Music: Arabesque No. 1 by Colloboh
Anyways, let me know what you think, and don’t hesitate to reach out. I am always looking to connect with fellow artists & illustrators to share the joys and sorrows of creating pretty pictures from our heads.
Lea
