Week thirty - Hair Guide

Howdy guys!

As I've been writing up my first draft of the manuscript (now finished and I'll be posting a few stories from that soon, eep!) I've realised that the book is a collection of shorter stories I want to tell that jump all over the place and don't stick to a chronological timeline. So instead of having to write "when I was 16..." or "In 2001..." at the start of the each story, I thought I'd make a guide or key for the readers. Here's one I prepared before I settled on my drawing style for the book (I now draw eyes with pupils, my face slightly rounder and a bigger nose):

My hair styles have always been something that I enjoyed playing around with as I never had my ears pierced, wore much jewellery or ever really wanted to get tattoos to define my style. I always took great care to think of what hair style would look best for me next and I've never settled on anything for much longer than a year. The biggest downside to this is, being an autobio cartoonist, I always have to learn to re-draw myself when ever I get a new 'do. 

Here are some of the highs and lows of my hair's career:

In my 20s I finally bleached and dyed my hair a variety of rainbow colours and it was awesome (I was terrified for a long time that if I bleached my hair it would drop out or never grow back the same natural colour (I've always liked my dark brown hair). After the first bleaching I promptly got over this fear and went on a colouring rampage. 

Rob on the other hand has pretty much had three haircuts in his life. 

1. Short but not shaven. His hair is super fine and soft. I always liked this cut. 

2. Short and shaven all over. As Rob got older he started to hate getting his hair cut (and was bigger and could complain about it). So shaving all over was the easiest thing to do. This remained his standard haircut for pretty much a decade. 

3. Then along came the combo. Shaven all over EXCEPT for the fringe which was kept slightly longer so he could play with it. 

And even though he didn't like a hairdresser cutting his hair, he loved cutting his own hair and would hunt out any pair of scissors he could. Of course he would do this sneakily and we wouldn't know until he came out of his room with an uneven fringe or a bald patch at the back of his head. 

Mum and Dad are also guilty of a variety of awesome haircuts (my Mum even had a Tank Girl haircut at one point - unfortunately there are no photos of this). 

By the time I came into their life, though, their hair styles remained fairly similar. Both short.

Although Dad did use to have a killer moustache. 

So for the book, they have mostly been drawn in this look. (Although in later stories Mum has glasses and Dad is moustaches-less).

What do you guys reckon? Would a hair guide be a useful thing for the story? Do you think it would work?

Hope you have a lovely weekend planned and I can't wait to share my new, finished, first draft manuscript with you guys. (That's coming up in a post soon!)

xx