I am probably just misunderstanding something but I cannot get this to work.

Basically I am trying to display an animated graphic of a clock while my
program completes initialization.  That is I try to make the application
window visible as soon as possible so the user knows that the program has
actually started, but it cannot do any real work for the user until it has
built all of the internal tables (mostly by reading an XML file).

I do not want to put the graphic into a JInternalFrame because I do not want
the title and frame that a JInternalFrame puts around its contents, so I am
trying to just put the Image into a JLabel and adding that to the
JDesktopPane.  Although the description of JDesktopPane only discusses the
behavior of JInternalFrames, JDesktopPane does extend JLayeredPane which
clearly does support the addition of JLabels, as demonstrated by the example
on the java.sun.com web site.  Also the only post I could find in
groups.google.com related to this also indicated that the poster had
succeeded in adding a JLabel to a JDesktopPane.

In the following code I have two problems:

1) the JLabel does not appear.
2) I cannot get the graphics context of the JLabel in order to draw the
initial position of the moving portion of the image.  I do get it when the
timer pops, although of course since I cannot see the JLabel I do not
actually see the animation.  I want to get the graphics context before I
display the label, but this does not appear to be permitted.

public class BusyDialog extends JLabel
  implements ActionListener
{
...
   public BusyDialog(JDesktopPane desk) {
this.desk = desk; // save the desktop
...
clockHeight = clockImage.getIconHeight();
clockWidth = clockImage.getIconWidth();
pendulumHeight = pendulumLeftImage.getIconHeight();
pendulumWidth = pendulumLeftImage.getIconWidth();
pendulumX = (clockWidth - pendulumWidth)>>1;
pendulumY = (clockHeight - pendulumHeight) - 5;
setIcon(clockImage); // image
// center label in desktop
Rectangle bounds = getBounds();
Dimension deskSize= desk.getSize();
if (bounds.width < deskSize.width)
    bounds.x = (deskSize.width - bounds.width)/2;
else
    bounds.x = 0;
if (bounds.height < deskSize.height)
    bounds.y = (deskSize.height - bounds.height)/2;
else
    bounds.y = 0;
setBounds(bounds);
// get the graphics context of the label, note that this does NOT work
graphics = getGraphics();

// draw the pendulum at its initial position
if (graphics != null)
{
pendulumLeftImage.paintIcon(this,
       graphics,
       pendulumX,
       pendulumY);
}
else
{
    System.err.println("graphics == null");
}
pendulumPos = 1; // draw pendulum centre next
// add the label to the desktop
desk.add(this, 1); // add to desktop
setVisible(true); // display the label
// start a timer to wake up every second
timer = new Timer(1000, this);
timer.start();
   }  // BusyDialog.BusyDialog