They say you never know when inspiration will strike, and boy is that true. This week’s Illustration Friday topic was “music,” and I racked my brain for a good long while today to come up with a good idea. It seemed boring to just draw a band or a musician or something like that. This was a topic that cried out for a hook. Early this evening, we were watching an old episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” – the season 3 episode “Band Chocolate,” where mysterious chocolate bars make Sunnydale’s adult population revert to adolescent behavior. Under the influence, Giles is dressed in something that I supposed was meant to evoke a bit of ’70s British punk style, which made me think of the Clash, and the cover to “London Calling” with its iconic image of Paul Simonon caught in the midst of pulling a Pete Townshend and from there to this famous image of Pete Townshend himself about to do his thing with yet another guitar. That rolled around in my head for a few minutes to combine with all the classical music I’ve been listening to recently, and the idea took shape pretty quickly.
The cello – the same shape and roughly the same size as a guitar – seemed like the obvious choice. At first I thought I’d do a take-off on the “London Calling” image, but upon really looking at it instead of just recalling my mental picture of it, I realized that using that pose and composition wouldn’t have the effect I wanted, so I went with the Townshend image. Works better anyway – when you think of guitar-smashing, Pete Townshend’s gotta be the undisputed king.