Orange paint made fanned swirls in the middle of the artist’s canvas, dabbed on by his brush. Next came red, mixing scarlet with the orange. The tapered tip of the brush stirred the two fiery colors together, blending them. The end result was a large orange-red sphere in the center of the stretched canvas.

For the Earth’s molten core, the artist thought, then switched brushes and colors.

Black and light brown were added next, painted on top of the orange and red. Tiny streaks and spaces were left in the darker colors, allowing the lighter, brighter, mix below to show through. The dark round shape of the brown and ebony mixture was slightly larger than the orange and red had been, expanding the design outward, filling most of the canvas.

As the artist again changes brushes, he thought, The black and the brown…Earth’s crust and soil.

The next color was a brilliant shade of blue. It was applied over the swirls of black and brown paint, thinly, as to allow the previous two layers of paint to be faintly seen. The cerulean did not extend the edges of the painting as the black and brown had. It merely covered it.

Blue, thought the artist, for the seas and oceans that cover the Earth.

More brown came next. As it had been each time before, the paint was applied thinly and purposely streaked so as to allow the underlying colors to peek through. Unlike before, this time the paint did not cover the entire unfolding design. The dark brown paint was added only here and there, leaving great patches of sapphire between the new patches of brown.

The continents.

Green came next, covering the brown shapes of the previous layer of the painting. As always before, the artist kept the paint thin and streaked, rather than a solid mass. The mingled hues of all of the proceeding layers bled through, joining together to create a myriad-colored mosaic.

Vegetation, the artist thought. The trees and grasses and other plants.

Small dots in varying colors – ivory, ebony, crimson, dun, and saffron – followed. These were dabbed onto the emerald of the previous layer. They added still another stratum and more color to the mosaic, as well as providing a slightly different texture to it.

The people and the animals of the Earth.

White was the next color used. The artist’s brush moved in broad strokes, always keeping the paint thin. Light, milky shapes were added here and there at random over top of the design. After the addition of several shapes the artist backed away from his canvas as he changed brushes and paint once more.

Those are the clouds, he thought. Light, fluffy clouds, floating over the landscape and the people.

Next came more blue, azure this time, a much lighter, paler shade than he has used the last time. The thin, watery blue covered the entirety of the underlying layers when the artist was finished with it.

For the blue sky, the artist thought, above the clouds at the edge of space itself.

Laying aside the brush the artist exchanged it for yet another. Dipping it into the yellow paint he quickly smeared a very thin, light coating of lemon yellow atop the blue.

The sunlight striking the Earth.

Again, he lay down his brush and looked at the canvas. Due to the scanty, spotty nature of the painting style the artist had practiced, each layer of the design could be seen. Staring at the variegated mosaic, the artist could see the initial layer of orange-red even through the combined strata that topped it – the black and brown layers of crust and soil, the dark blue water, the brown landmasses, the green plants, the multi-colored dots of the people and animals, the white clouds, the light blue sky, and the yellow sunlight.

The Earth, thought the artist as he began to clean his brushes.

Image by Wolfgang Staudt via Flickr