The steampunk comic bet isn’t going well, because I discovered I don’t have the eye for historical clothing details. In other words, I get impatient or too detail-oriented, which distorts my usual style.
However, I discovered an interesting way to practise my drawing skills.
I hadn’t sketched for years, not since two balls of energy entered our lives as well as the travelling and the developing interest in an online book community, so I needed to do some random doodles to do away the rustiness.
But doodling can only take me so far. I thought it was time to practice some rough storyboarding, but I’m not a creative person. I randomly used a song as an inspiration. Somehow a story easily developed from listening to the lyrics. I enjoyed the experience, which surprised the heck out of me.
I ended up sketching over thirty song-inspired stories. Some terrible, some not too bad and some were abandoned half-way. Four comic pages each. A couple, just two pages. Some took under an hour and some a couple of hours. All sketches.
Songs were chosen from listening to radio. A couple were my personal favourite songs. Once in a while, a random choice from Will’s vast collection. I don’t necessarily like all songs used, but they triggered a “story” in my head, which made it easier to do a rough comic sketch.
List of songs used (in brackets – a setting I used in a comic):
[click on a song title to read the lyrics in a new window at LyricWiki.org]
- Ghost Town - The Specials (a favourite song) (sketched according to lyrics, using Newcastle as a setting)
- Don’t Marry Her - The Beautiful South (sketched according to lyrics)
- Lying in the Sun - The Stereophonics (in rush-hour crowd… such a cliche!)
- There She Goes - The La’s (blatantly stole iconic scenes from Trainspotting)
- London Crawling – Rialto (sketched according to lyrics, but abandoned half-way)
- Oceans - Pearl Jam (a crowded train on its way to Brighton)
- The River - Live (at a concert, but Will says it’s similar to Beck, so it was abandoned; am glad because sketching a guitar was a nightmare)
- Warriors in Woolworth - X-ray Spex (blatantly stole iconic scenes from An Orange Clockwork and Shaun of the Dead, so it’ll never see the daylight)
- Made of Stone - The Stone Roses (sketched according to lyrics)
- Mony Mony – Tommy James and the Shondells (joyriders on an empty motorway after midnight)
- Guns of Brixton – The Clash (I knew who they were referring to, so sketched according to what I know)
- Family Affair – Abra Moore (sketched according to lyrics)
- Heroes - David Bowie (a criminal couple on the run, heh!)
- Be My Baby - The Ronettes (this surprised me the most because for some reason, I set the story in a retirement home)
- I Do – Jude (sketched according to lyrics)
- Town Called Malice - The Jam (sketched according to lyrics; used Sheffield)
- What a Difference a Day Makes - Dinah Washington (this is probably my favourite sketch – a rather sweet story is told through the eyes of a teenage girl who works at a cafe in a dead seaside town)
- Ye Sleeping Knights of Jesus - Robyn Hitchcock (sketched according to the lyrics)
- I Wanna Be Adored - The Stone Roses (a twentysomething bloke on a night out, heavily modelled after one of W’s four best friends, JR – a confident, easy-going cockerel)
- Pins and Needles – The Clovers (sketched according to lyrics)
- The Blower’s Daughter – Damien Rice (so easy to sketch; sketched acc to lyrics)
- Fairy Tale of New York - The Pogues and Kirsty McCall (the toughest to sketch because I wasn’t familiar with some references in the lyrics, e.g. Mountain Dew)
- The Boys Are Back in Town – Thin Lizzy (sketched according to lyrics)
- In the Still of the Night - The Five Satins (the aftermath of domestic violence. Told through a dying man’s eyes after his battered girlfriend reliated against him. Inspired by a tragic news item I read a while ago. Very cheery, eh?)
- Ivy Ivy Ivy - Primal Scream (sketched according to lyrics)
- Slide Away – Oasis (two fighter pilots, set against an intense intergalactic war; had to abandon because I couldn’t convey what I had in mind to paper, maybe when my drawing skills improve, I’ll try again)
- The Coffee Song - Cream (the sketch somehow evolved into ‘On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning‘, a short story by Haruki Murakami, so it was abandoned)
- 2:1 - Elastica (one of two autobiographical works I did here so far; a recollection of the night I spent with five childhood friends on a field near our home before I was due to leave home for good when I was sixteen; it was a confusing time as some felt I was leaving too soon and that I blamed/hated Scotland for wrong reasons but still, we got drunk while we chatted, reminisced and played dare games, pretending we weren’t aware I’d be leaving next day. It was anti-climactic when we parted at dawn to head for our homes. After I left home, I never saw some of them again. I still have mixed feelings about that. Obviously this doesn’t reflect the story, but it does have a similar feeling, which is why I think of that time whenever I hear this song.)
- Whatcha See is Whatcha Get – The Dramatics (sketched according to lyrics, but abandoned because it didn’t come through well)
- Live Forever - Oasis (the easiest to sketch) (a semi-continual from the 2:1 story; it’s a “thank-you letter” to a childhood friend who saw me through thick and thin during our childhood years; regrettably, I never saw him again because his family moved to Australia not long after. I bet he was happy about that because he was a surfer all his life.)
- All About the Married Life - Pizzicato Five (sketched according to lyrics)
- Luka - Suzanne Vega (sketched according to the lyrics, but abandoned because I found it too upsetting while the mites played in front of me)
- She’s Not There – The Zombies (another favourite) (sketched according to lyrics and set at a college, clearly modelled after Doncaster)
- Castle in the Air – Eloy (a two-page scene with Speakers’ Corner as its setting)
Hopefully I will have enough self-confidence to pick one and develop it as a proper comic. The inking and all. When I do, I will scan and upload it to here. Obviously I’m making a copyright violation, so let’s hope the owners won’t mind me using their lyrics to narrate a story. I’m leaning towards the What a Difference a Day Makes story.
Speaking of inking, I was shocked to learn many cartoonists nowadays use a tablet and stylus via Photoshop to do their drawing. When I learnt this relevation I thought, “Why, in my days it was…” The moment I thought that, I instantly felt really old. It was only the 1990s, damn it.
And yeah, I am certain I’ll lose the steampunk comic bet. Not that I’ll tell the colleague, not until the last day of the month (20th August). Let him wonder. Heheh.