"Thaw" + "Spring Cartoons"

I swear that this one is based purely on personal experience. After class one morning this late winter I walked out to where the Subie had been parked in the sun, got in, started it, and basically basked like a lizard on a hot stone in the desert.

 
And the whole rest of the afternoon while running errands I just kept on baking, absolutely loving every minute soaking in the furnace blast. Actually to confess after it reached around 280°F I did slightly crack a window

Trivia: Here's the upper caption box that was clipped out of the print version in the interest of brevity. Edit, edit, edit. You can see the original addendum to the doodle as it appeared in my sketchbook below, along with a quick value study with wash.

Also as a bonus double-header here's another seasonal one that also takes place inside a vehicle. That's a place second only to the outhouse when it comes to random inspiration, and as I commented earlier on another post, if you think distracted driving from texting is unsafe then you ain't never seen the public menace from daydreaming cartoonists behind the wheel. At least when I drive off a cliff or into a tree I'll be laughing.

But seriously, this particular panel took some actual plotting + research: not only messing around with layers in Photoshop but studying screengrabs of freezeframed videos on wiper blade action so as to get the action somewhat sorta right. All told I spent more time on this cartoon than attention to detail & maintenance on my actual car. Priorities!

One last little detail to append on this latest last-minute rash of seasonally transitional pieces: my production stream was actually truncated this year on account of (yet another) anomaly. I mean, maybe time to pay attention now that climate change has trickled down to the point where some cartoonist in the middle of Alaska has their normal cycle disrupted - as in, ran outta winter material an entire month ahead of schedule. Nothing to see here folks. Everything's fine.