#98: Desperately waving
Hello salespeople,
Hold onto your butts, it’s time for another wholesome week of wholesome cartoons. All very wholesome.
This week we see a crafty sales balloon man, and get a taste of danger at the gym.
Lifting us up,
Chris
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Caption: “Stop. Before it sees us.”
Don’t let the low-low bargains catch you.
You can see the incessant waving on the horizon. You know it’s there. Waiting. Watching. Hoping that today might be the day you’ll take advantage of a great rate on a set of used car tires.
Hope that it doesn’t notice you.
A little artist’s note: The first version of this cartoon was drawn some time back in 2023 and, like so many cartoons, it was lovingly rejected and set on the pile, there to spend an eternity in my distant memory.
But then, recently, I drew a new cartoon using a sales balloon man, or whatever they’re called, and I thought: Hey, haven’t I done one of these before? And so, after much digging through files, mostly to try and remember what I would have called it, I came across this one. Only, of course, it didn’t look like this. Instead, it look like this pillar of the community:
So, same composition, but my word what is going on with those necks? And that background? Are they in prison? Or worse, a sauna? It was my style at the time, and I needed to push through that style before I managed to get to my current style, but gosh, it’s hard to look at now.
Anyway, I just really like this joke, and once I had rediscovered it among the rejection debris, I realised it could use a run in the sun. Or whatever the world looks like where you are.
Caption: “Hey stranger, want to be solely responsible for my safety as I unnecessarily lift these weights?”
Would you spot someone?
Like, you know, really heavy things. The kind of things that, if you dropped them, would lead to a fairly swift demise. And to lift things not for any life-saving purpose, but merely to see if you can?
I know which direction I would be running.
A little artist’s note: I’m not really the gym type. Kudos for anyone who is, but give me anything but a gym and I’ll be happy.
So the idea for this one came from a slightly different inspiration. Years ago, I went indoor rock climbing, complete with indoor rocks, for a work trip. And it was a great and interesting experience. However, the thing that struck me was that in order to make these climbs, you had to have someone spot you. Someone who would be standing at the bottom of the rope providing tension. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m probably barely qualified to simply hold a rope and yet, here I was holding on, providing tension for someone else so that if they slipped, I could yank it and keep them up there.
At the time, it was more pressure than the climb itself. Nobody told me I would need to be the one who was responsible for someone else’s life when, for the most part, I was barely qualified to take care of my own.
Anyway, visually, the real kicker with this one was actually drawing the gym equipment. Any sort of mechanical equipment is always hard going as you never really know how much detail to pack in there, so it ends up being a case of just including enough to make sure that it fits with what it is meant to be, for the most part.
So, the moral of the story? Don’t ask me to spot you or be responsible for your life in a super-risky situation of your own creation. Good with you?
Thanks for reading The Mid-Week Squiggle.
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