High above a vast chasm, a man walks along a tightrope, hanging out the family washing while walking the dog. It was a compromise that enabled him to continue with his passion.

A few weeks back, I posted a picture of a tightrope walking guy with vultures perched on his balancing pole. The drawing above was actually done prior to that, but it remained a rough draft until now.

This isn’t the same guy, but they possibly went to the same acrobatic school to learn their nerve-racking skill.

I wondered how the wife of a daredevil-type guy who consistently tightrope walked in dangerous conditions, might cope with his ongoing peril and life-risking behaviour. Supposedly most wouldn’t cope well at all and would live in constant fear of losing her loved one. Any who were OK with it, would have to be tempted to add a few conditions to his continued hobby / vocation. I imagine there would be some house chores involved, such as hanging out the washing and taking the dog for a walk.

When I had finished this one, I realised that in reducing it for the web, it would lose a lot of detail. There was a lot of open space to give a feeling of isolation and insignificance to the tightrope walking guy given the surrounding abyss. This occurred last week as well with the dog in the upstairs room that became too small once reduced. To remedy this in the current case, I opted for less reduction and more cropping. The main focus was zoomed in on and a lot of the surrounding landscape cropped. Features lost include a couple of cacti, the tightrope tethering posts at either end and one bed-sheet pegged to the rope.

These items weren’t crucial to the drawing and were happily sacrificed for the preservation of larger characters with better detail.