#23: Dig, scrape and bury
Hello land lubbers,
Hold on to your hats, it’s time for another illustrious set of cartoons.
This week we discover an unexpected best man, see some unexpected trophies, and get some unexpected advice. And all here, right here.
Taking some unexpected turns,
Chris
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Caption: “I warned him not to make Buddy his best man.”
Dogs are man’s best friend, but are they also man’s best man?
How many people have, in preparing for their nuptials, asked some random human to be their best man, when all they really want is ask their actual best friend? It’s a question that this cartoon seeks to answer, with expectedly chaotic results.
Still, it might be worth a shot.
A little artist’s note: Dogs, humans, biscuits! This cartoon has everything. And because it has everything, it was fairly involved. The challenge with drawing a bunch of guys is essentially: hair. Oh sure, you might be able to conjure a couple of hair styles with notable differences, but can you do 4? And all in a cartoon style? It turns out you can, but the difference is only ever so slight. Long story short, either men need to change up their hair styles, or I need to become a better cartoonist. I would say there is a foot in both camps there.
Caption: “I see you're admiring my potholes.”
Trophy hunting is kind of a strange thing, especially when the thing you’ve caught is on the wall and staring back at you when you walk into the room.
But we’re all hunters, and sometimes our prey isn’t wilderness animals, but something closer to home. Maybe, just maybe, we’re hunting for potholes. Sweet glorious potholes. And then maybe, just maybe, you might want to hang them on the walls in your study.
And then maybe, just maybe, you’ll want to reinforce the walls.
A little artist’s note: I have ALWAYS wanted to draw a trophy wall cartoon, but I just never found the right trophies. But here, as I looked out the window at the pothole in the street, it just made sense.
Beyond all that, the challenge with this cartoon is, quite simply, that I’m not really sure how to draw potholes on a wall. Would they be just holes? Would they be pictures? In the end, I settled for big slaps of asphalt, and now I’ll hope like crazy that they look like what I think they look like. The challenges of breaking new ground… or repairing it.
Caption: "Now you'll want to put aside 30 minutes to let it simmer, and another 20 minutes to scrape it off the pot."
Mothers have the best advice.
This is something I wish I had known earlier. But perhaps, more importantly, if I had known that for the first 10 years of my cooking life I would be trying to get burnt pasta sauce off the side of the pot or pan after letting it simmer for just that little bit too long, perhaps I would have learned to cook properly earlier.
Burnt food for thought, I guess.
A little artist’s note: This is a fairly simple cartoon, but it’s also one that brings back a set of recurring characters: the mother and daughter team. The daughter isn’t based on anyone in particular, but the mother is a bit of a composite of my two late grandmothers.
And, if you’re wondering, here is the first one featuring these characters, which is notable for another cooking joke, and also an earlier evolution of my drawing style:
The bones of the style were there, but none of the curves.
Thanks for reading MiddleSquiggle!
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