He appears to be painting this scene from life. Though how he got everyone to pose and hold position is a question I have. I guess that’st he joke. Something that happens quickly is being painted by an artist and you know they demand models hold positions for a long time.
Like people who record accidents with their phones instead of preventing / helping?
I agree with SingaporeBill, but whatever McPherson thinks is going here is still a mystery. Normally one would think “big raptor delivers a human as food for its nestlings“, but in this drawing the bird looks more like a seagull, and as it arrives the human is already in the nest, and those chicks aren’t hungry, they’re laughing.
P.S. This is one of those rare CtH panels in which the artwork is better than the joke.
P.P.S. Perhaps it’s a self portrait. This artist may be holding his brush the same way McPherson does: backwards, in his fist.
Is the real human that he’s observing through binoculars trying to beg the mama bird for food like a nestling, or napping in that odd nest and surprised the mama bird has returned? And what kind of bird is it? It looks sort of like a gigantic seagull. I’m not sure I agree the art is better than the joke.
If a killer robot was chasing you, you could show him this cartoon and say “This is funny.” The robot’s brain would then burn out trying to figure out the logic, and you’d be saved. So, score one for Close to Home.
THERE’s Waldo.
The bottom edge of the canvas could be better defined. It misled me at first into seeing the guy and nestlings as right here and now, with the swooping bird on a painted backdrop.
Made more sense after I corrected that and noted the binocs. As others have pointed out, the painter is impossibly capturing in paint a moment of movement and action, that photography could freeze-frame, but painting cannot.
The swooping bird seems to me to be attacking the human intruder in its nest, and thus protecting her nestlings from him. However, if the swooping bird and the chicks were clearly of different species, and the former could be construed as a raptor, I would be inclined to see this as reenactment of the “one fell swoop” speech from Macbeth.
I don’t think the joke is that the painter wouldn’t be able to paint this scene quick enough. In real life, skilled artists do manage to depict scene with moving objects.
I think it’s more what Oliver indicated: the joke is that the guy in the nest is in trouble, and the artist is just paiting the scene, rather than doing anything to help.
I feel we’re entering a new Dark Age when I read “the painter is impossibly capturing in paint a moment of movement and action, that photography could freeze-frame, but painting cannot.”, in that we’re forgetting what humans could (can still?) do.
Here’s something I discovered with the iPhone camera that I found surprisingly effective. There’s been a “Live” setting on it for a few years. It basically records a very short (maybe a second long) movie as a photo is being taken.
The movie part is a separate file from the photo; and the iPhone can show the movie part when the picture is pressed with a finger tip. After our company picnic I extracted all the movie pieces and played them like a playlist. It turned out to be such a perfect amount of movement in each scene that I was emotionally affected.. without adding any time to the slide show; . I guess the little bit of movement made it easier to take in each captured moment.
I see it as Winter Wallaby does.
The guy is casually painting a morbid scene.
The joke doesn’t work because it is just too strange and surreal to actually register. And like Kilby says….. the birds are …. seagulls?????
Well, the guy somehow got into the nest on his own power and with intent (if parent bird brought him there, wouldn’t parent bird have done him to death whatever already?), so perhaps he intended to steal eggs and/or the newly-born chicks, and parent bird saw this and is now attacking, which is why the chicks, seeing their parental savior arrive, are smiling.
This doesn’t make it *funny* in any way, of course, but it makes (a little bit of) sense.
SO: the “incredibly fast painter” bit is supposed to do the “make it funny” part. Epic fail.
This comic raises a question: how do you render a painting in a hand-drawn comic, to make it clear that’s what it is?
^^ Easel-y done!
Good one, Brian!
Related to Grawlix’s question, I have wondered this: In an opera — where people are singing but in their world that means they are probably speaking — how do you indicate when a character is supposed to be singing?
The same thing could be asked about a musical play, though I don’t know if it makes it harder or easier that the actors aren’t actually singing all the time. It actually was probably easier in the older stage musicals tradition, before the songs were expected to be integrated into the plot, when they could just be a case of “Now why don’t you give us a song, dear?”.
When Carmen sings “”Tralalalala, coupe-moi, brûle-moi”, the tra-la-la is a clue she’s singing. (And in the “Carmen Jones” adaptation, when Corporal Joe tells her to stop, she says “Just singin to myself”.) The Gypsy Dance at the start of Act II is probably sung. Also later in Act II when she improvises castanets and sings and dances for José, there is more of that “Tra-la-la” and she says “I sang and danced for you! Then the retreat sounds and you fly off like a canary”..
“Summertime” in Porgy and Bess is a lullaby being sung to the baby. Crown is I think clearly offering “A Red-Headed Woman” as a song, his contribution to the hurricane-refuge entertainment — to show he’s not afraid and people shouldn’t be taking their situation so seriously.
@Olivier, it looks like the painter is MUCH too far away to be of any help.
@BA: he could try Zeuxis’ method, i.e. lure the bird away by painting realistic food.
Whoa, what were we calling that effect, when something new to you appears several times?
When I saw Olivier’s comment, I recognized the name only because I had just a moment earlier seen it, as the (historical) word of the day from OED.
“OED Online Word of the Day
Your word for Monday 3rd February is: Zeuxis, n.”
Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.
As in, “I just found out about the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon and now I’m seeing examples of it everywhere.”
This is what happens when a lad is found trying to “romance” a couple of “birds” while they are having their portrait painted and their dad comes home early. (Told you all that I tend to think outside the box. Spend a good part of my time censoring what I am thinking before talking.)
Comics I Don't Understand 
He appears to be painting this scene from life. Though how he got everyone to pose and hold position is a question I have. I guess that’st he joke. Something that happens quickly is being painted by an artist and you know they demand models hold positions for a long time.
Like people who record accidents with their phones instead of preventing / helping?
I agree with SingaporeBill, but whatever McPherson thinks is going here is still a mystery. Normally one would think “big raptor delivers a human as food for its nestlings“, but in this drawing the bird looks more like a seagull, and as it arrives the human is already in the nest, and those chicks aren’t hungry, they’re laughing.
P.S. This is one of those rare CtH panels in which the artwork is better than the joke.
P.P.S. Perhaps it’s a self portrait. This artist may be holding his brush the same way McPherson does: backwards, in his fist.
Is the real human that he’s observing through binoculars trying to beg the mama bird for food like a nestling, or napping in that odd nest and surprised the mama bird has returned? And what kind of bird is it? It looks sort of like a gigantic seagull. I’m not sure I agree the art is better than the joke.
If a killer robot was chasing you, you could show him this cartoon and say “This is funny.” The robot’s brain would then burn out trying to figure out the logic, and you’d be saved. So, score one for Close to Home.
THERE’s Waldo.
The bottom edge of the canvas could be better defined. It misled me at first into seeing the guy and nestlings as right here and now, with the swooping bird on a painted backdrop.
Made more sense after I corrected that and noted the binocs. As others have pointed out, the painter is impossibly capturing in paint a moment of movement and action, that photography could freeze-frame, but painting cannot.
The swooping bird seems to me to be attacking the human intruder in its nest, and thus protecting her nestlings from him. However, if the swooping bird and the chicks were clearly of different species, and the former could be construed as a raptor, I would be inclined to see this as reenactment of the “one fell swoop” speech from Macbeth.
I don’t think the joke is that the painter wouldn’t be able to paint this scene quick enough. In real life, skilled artists do manage to depict scene with moving objects.
I think it’s more what Oliver indicated: the joke is that the guy in the nest is in trouble, and the artist is just paiting the scene, rather than doing anything to help.
I feel we’re entering a new Dark Age when I read “the painter is impossibly capturing in paint a moment of movement and action, that photography could freeze-frame, but painting cannot.”, in that we’re forgetting what humans could (can still?) do.
Here’s something I discovered with the iPhone camera that I found surprisingly effective. There’s been a “Live” setting on it for a few years. It basically records a very short (maybe a second long) movie as a photo is being taken.
The movie part is a separate file from the photo; and the iPhone can show the movie part when the picture is pressed with a finger tip. After our company picnic I extracted all the movie pieces and played them like a playlist. It turned out to be such a perfect amount of movement in each scene that I was emotionally affected.. without adding any time to the slide show; . I guess the little bit of movement made it easier to take in each captured moment.
I see it as Winter Wallaby does.
The guy is casually painting a morbid scene.
The joke doesn’t work because it is just too strange and surreal to actually register. And like Kilby says….. the birds are …. seagulls?????
Well, the guy somehow got into the nest on his own power and with intent (if parent bird brought him there, wouldn’t parent bird have done him to death whatever already?), so perhaps he intended to steal eggs and/or the newly-born chicks, and parent bird saw this and is now attacking, which is why the chicks, seeing their parental savior arrive, are smiling.
This doesn’t make it *funny* in any way, of course, but it makes (a little bit of) sense.
SO: the “incredibly fast painter” bit is supposed to do the “make it funny” part. Epic fail.
This comic raises a question: how do you render a painting in a hand-drawn comic, to make it clear that’s what it is?
^^ Easel-y done!
Good one, Brian!
Related to Grawlix’s question, I have wondered this: In an opera — where people are singing but in their world that means they are probably speaking — how do you indicate when a character is supposed to be singing?
The same thing could be asked about a musical play, though I don’t know if it makes it harder or easier that the actors aren’t actually singing all the time. It actually was probably easier in the older stage musicals tradition, before the songs were expected to be integrated into the plot, when they could just be a case of “Now why don’t you give us a song, dear?”.
When Carmen sings “”Tralalalala, coupe-moi, brûle-moi”, the tra-la-la is a clue she’s singing. (And in the “Carmen Jones” adaptation, when Corporal Joe tells her to stop, she says “Just singin to myself”.) The Gypsy Dance at the start of Act II is probably sung. Also later in Act II when she improvises castanets and sings and dances for José, there is more of that “Tra-la-la” and she says “I sang and danced for you! Then the retreat sounds and you fly off like a canary”..
“Summertime” in Porgy and Bess is a lullaby being sung to the baby. Crown is I think clearly offering “A Red-Headed Woman” as a song, his contribution to the hurricane-refuge entertainment — to show he’s not afraid and people shouldn’t be taking their situation so seriously.
@Olivier, it looks like the painter is MUCH too far away to be of any help.
@BA: he could try Zeuxis’ method, i.e. lure the bird away by painting realistic food.
Whoa, what were we calling that effect, when something new to you appears several times?
When I saw Olivier’s comment, I recognized the name only because I had just a moment earlier seen it, as the (historical) word of the day from OED.
“OED Online Word of the Day
Your word for Monday 3rd February is: Zeuxis, n.”
Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.
As in, “I just found out about the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon and now I’m seeing examples of it everywhere.”
This is what happens when a lad is found trying to “romance” a couple of “birds” while they are having their portrait painted and their dad comes home early. (Told you all that I tend to think outside the box. Spend a good part of my time censoring what I am thinking before talking.)