#44: Quite a lot going on right now
Hello well-wishers,
You don’t need to be an expert to know that it’s time for another set of cartoons, you just need to be reading this email.
This week we have a surprise sports commentary, an age-old question answered, and a medical delay.
Kicking to the goals,
Chris
Like what you see? Follow me on Instagram (@chrisshorten), or talk a friend into following me on Instagram.
Caption: “And now we cross to Ed, for some snide remarks about the players.”
We are all Ed, sometimes.
You know, he’s a sports lover. A passionate one. A sports lover who gets very vocal about their team, its players, and, of course, the opposing side. Usually in the privacy of their own home. You know, where there aren’t any repercussions.
Maybe this is you, too?
A little artist’s note: My original idea for this came not from this week’s NFL Super Bowl, but from Australia’s own AFL Grand Final. I was watching the game with friends, and we all found ourselves adding our commentary and coming up with the best ill-informed takes on the players. And it made me wonder: would we say the same thing if we were being broadcast. If the players could hear us? Probably not.
Visually, this one’s pretty simple. Although it does introduce a couch, which turns out to be one of the harder things to draw. I’ve drawn a few, and this one certainly wasn’t any easier than the others. But it’s definitely got the best shading of all my couches. That, I am certain of.
Caption: N/A
It’s Valentine’s Day and love is in the air, or is it?
Because love comes across in many ways. Maybe it’s a feeling in the heart. Maybe it’s a spark of chemistry in the brain. Or maybe it’s a flutter in the stomach. Or perhaps that flutter is something very different.
Like, say, something you ate?
A little artist’s note: I know, I know, it’s another comic-style cartoon. And, in truth, I didn’t really intend to do another one so soon, but when the idea came to me, it seemed far too good to pass up. After all, it is Valentines day.
This one actually took quite a lot of time to get right, far longer than I had really expected. The challenge, I found, was trying to balance out not two, but three different characters (the heart, the brain, and the stomach) and make it have some perspective. I knew I wanted the stomach to come hurtling towards them and, of course, this raises questions around what ‘space’ they are all existing in, which I would prefer you didn’t ask, but also, how to show that perspective. In the end, I settled on a combination of lines to show distance, combined with the stomach getting bigger as it got closer.
You’ll also see that I’ve given this a series title, Involuntary. Will I do more of them? Perhaps. But when I did the comic last week, I wanted to add this title, so I figured I would make amends this time around.
Caption: “Prescription that shouldn’t have taken this long to fill.”
Some things just take a while.
You know, like that script you took to the pharmacy and then you figured you would wander around the store, and the store was fairly quiet, and then it was only when you had one aisle left to casually walk down that your script is called out. And then you think to yourself, how did that take so long?
This is a cartoon about that. Maybe you can relate?
**Apologies to my pharmacist friends; this is definitely not about you.
A little artist’s note: First up, my apologies again to all of my actual pharmacist friends; as I say, this is definitely not about you.
Second, from an art perspective, this one is actually pretty simply, although it got that way from starting out really complicated. Previous versions featured arrows on the floor, a wall covered in safety posters, and a surprisingly packed pharmacy in the background. It had it all. And it was all super distracting. So, like so many times before, I started to strip the layers back to bring it back to the very core of simply the pharmacist and the lone customer, both just hanging out together. Simple-ish.
Thanks for reading MiddleSquiggle!
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