Saturday Holmes

[tealin]

After catching up with four hours of Holmes plays I'd missed on account of not having RealPlayer at work, there was only one possible subject for my sketchbook last night:




Yeah yeah, he looks like a cross between Jacques and Otto, and is veering too old, but it's a start! Yes? I do like my Watson, he looks more like how I picture him in the plays and text without quite so much of the stereotypical pudgy old man. Is the moustache canon? I don't remember a specific mention of it but it seems to be pretty universal.

Oh, and what would be complete without Mycroft? Tee-hee.

If you want to give yourself a treat (before Wednesday and Thursday, respectively) listen to The Final Problem and The Empty House. Yay character development! Sir Conan Doyle is so mean to Watson.

I have any number of rational excuses for not sketchbooking on Friday but none of them matter; suffice it to say discipline is severely lacking in the sketchbook camp this year. I will do a compensatory page today and then ... try ... again.

Comments

[noodledaddy.livejournal.com]

It's easy to see that Holmes is where you heart is.

[silly-izzy-me.livejournal.com]

Oh man, your style is great. Nice sketches :).

[sydpad.livejournal.com]

:D I've been listening to those every night!

I think Watson has a mustache for the same reason as Holmes has the deerstalker-- it's in the Sydney Paget drawings.

[adalanne.livejournal.com]

Damn. I'm gonna have to listen to those now. ^_^

I LOVE your Watson. When I finally read the stories, I was shocked at how horribly he was portrayed in just about every movie out there. Especially when I started with A Study in Scarlet where he's sickly skinny and deeply tanned.

As for Holmes, he eventually gets quite old, so I don't think there's any veering "too old." I personally love him, even sans giant forehead. ^_^

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I need to work on giving him a bigger forehead – all my characters have very high eyes and narrow foreheads so this will be a good excuse to break the habit, but a little difficult.

Thanks for liking my Watson! This obviously isn't his battle-scarred-and-bedraggled self from A Study in Scarlet but more like when he's married and settled down a bit... Anyway, he's fun, despite (or possibly because of?) all his abuse.

[floramir.livejournal.com]

Oh, your Holmes is so charming! XD

I never knew Watson was supposed to be a pudgy old man O.o I always thought he was good looking.

Have you NOT seen the Jeremy Brett Holmes???!!!! THEY ARE THE BEST!!! And I'm the scariest fan of that show, so if you don't like it, don't tell me.

That show was what got me to read them, and now I'm officially obsessed. *sigh* The scripts are so close to the books! They're just PERFECT.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Ar ar ar.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Oh, your Holmes is fab -- and just to tip the scale on the other side, I strongly dislike Jeremy Brett's portrayal and can't even stand to watch the Granada adaptations (which are very well done otherwise, particularly in their fairness to Watson) because he's so unlike my perception of the canonical Holmes in both looks and manner. Your version is MUCH closer to what I see in my mind.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

I've seen at least one episode (The Dancing Men) but my loyalty lies with the radio plays. Clive Merrison is the Man. :) Script adaptations are also spot-on, the only deviation from canon being the dramatisation of what's usually told as backstory in the books, and occasionally putting lines that were originally narration into the dialogue. ...which is kind of necessary for a radio play...

[ravenclaw-eric.livejournal.com]

The thing about canon-Watson is that he is _not_ stupid. He's not as sharp as Holmes is...but then, who else is? In many ways, he's the apotheosis of a Hufflepuff, and a Hufflepuff sidekick/sounding board/assistant is often of invaluable aid to a Hero.

Kind of like "Bunny" Manders in the Raffles stories, if you've ever read them. Now that you've discovered Holmes, if you haven't read Hornung's Raffles stories, go and do it! Raffles was created to be sort of an anti-Holmes, and Hornung was Conan Doyle's brother-in-law. I'd love to see your take on Raffles and Manders.

[azvolrien.livejournal.com]

I've only ever read The Hound of the Baskervilles, but I liked it.

Have you ever seen The Silly Side of Sherlock Holmes?

[tannhaeuser.livejournal.com]

[echogarrote.livejournal.com]

Love Holmes and Watson. Now you have to do Moriarty and/or Irene Alder.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

I will keep an eye out for them. Are they easy to find?

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, Moriarty looks somewhere between Vetinari and the Six-Fingered Man in my head, thanks to how he was acted in the radio play. We'll see. As for Irene, well, heh ... she's pretty, and we know my track record with pretty girls. I'll learn how to draw 'pretty' and then try her, how's that?

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Nooo, but it sounds like a treat!

[(Anonymous)]

yup! nailed that sherlock holmes!
i think watson is a bit too eh cartoony? or "cute/bubbly"? i don't know, can't think of words..

as for moriarty, i instantly thought of veterani in the radio plays

i like how the "jeremy brett versions" depicted him (more evil and sinnister) - they got me started aswell btw

hmm.. mycroft, i never depicted him like this, maybe erase one line of hair.. then he'll be perfect ;)

[tannhaeuser.livejournal.com]

[ravenclaw-eric.livejournal.com]

They've been reprinted many times, both in the UK and Commonwealth and the US (I don't know where you are offhand). Go to Amazon, enter "Raffles" for the title and "Hornung" for the author, and you should get a good selection. Or try a public library---if they don't have them they can certainly special-order them.

There are three collections of short stories---_The Amateur Cracksman,_ _The Black Mask_ and _A Thief in the Night._ There's also a novel, _Mr. Justice Raffles,_ which I read once but haven't seen in over twenty years.

[azvolrien.livejournal.com]

It's a book by Philip Ardagh, where's he's taken Sherlock Holmes illustrations from the Strand Magazine, but put really stupid captions to them. Here's an example.

http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l241/azvolrien/silliness.jpg

[ubiquitouspitt.livejournal.com]

YAY!! I'd been looking for some Paget drawings to send her and came up short.

[ubiquitouspitt.livejournal.com]

BRETTBRETTBRETTBRETTBRETT

[ubiquitouspitt.livejournal.com]

How many episodes of the Granada series have you seen? I had been a Holmes fan for nearly ten years before I saw them and had very clear ideas of what he should look like (Basil Rathbone). It took a few episodes but Brett grew on me.

[ubiquitouspitt.livejournal.com]

She's elegantly beautiful - you're good at that. It's not the same thing as pretty.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

I've seen three episodes, given me by an ardent Brett fan who was sure they would convert me -- BLUE, MUSG and... I forget the other one. I've never seen Basil Rathbone play Holmes, either, so that wasn't prejudicing my judgment -- in fact my Sherlockian mania is almost entirely book-based.

Anyway, I can get past Brett's looks. What I can't get past is the way he portrays Holmes. The canonical Holmes most certainly has his flaws and eccentricities (including his drug-taking) but on the whole he is a man in command of himself, a strong character. Brett's Holmes strikes me as brittle and shrill by comparison -- a twitchy, neurotic character rather than a cool analytical mind. It grates on my nerves.

To use an odious comparison, Young Sherlock Holmes is a terrible movie in many ways, and Nicholas Rowe doesn't look or sound much at all like the canonical description of Holmes, but I still prefer YSH to anything I've seen of the Granada series. At least Rowe had Holmes's general attitude and bearing right, IMO...

[rawrsie.livejournal.com]

I particularly like your Watson. Good to see you're keeping busy.

[just-curious.livejournal.com]

Very well done! I quite like the variations on Watson, not a bumbling idiot, but still able to be taken bby surprise. Another interesting take on the Sherlock Holmes portrayal is "Without A Clue" - a movie starring Michael Caine and Ben Kingsley. Both did a brilliant job, very witty and subtle. Kinsley made a marvellous Watson. Good for a quiet night in if you are interested.

[ubiquitouspitt.livejournal.com]

Oh, well shoot. There's nothing I can to sway you. I understand perfectly. In my case, I had grown so used to Holmes as a dry and cool character - this impression was reinforced by various cinematic performances. When I saw Brett, I was alarmed. I revised my books and remembered that Holmes did have an eccentric (and, imho, neurotic) side that had somehow been blotted out. I admire Brett for bringing a touch of the manic back Sherlock Holmes's character. However, I acknowledge that the electricity of his performances overwhelm, on occasion, and I can see how they would be particularly irksome to someone who cherishes the image of Holmes as being (for the most part) a dry calm personage.

I think you would like Basil Rathbone. Most of the SH productions he took part in are set in 1940's Britain. To my memory, his The Hound of the Baskervilles remained in the Victorian era.

[ubiquitouspitt.livejournal.com]

Mmmsmarmy. I'm going to stop choking up the intake valve on your lj by obsessing over Holmes. So, instead I'll obsess over Watson! Muffiemuffiemuffie look how CUTE - pudgy but not-too-pudgy handsome little face. *pinch, pinch!*

[mangameep.livejournal.com]

The moustache is canon.

“How are you, Watson?” said he cordially. “I should never have known you under that moustache . . . "

-The Naval Treaty (http://camdenhouse.ignisart.com/canon/nava.htm)

Your drawings are awesome! They have precisely the right spirit.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Icon FTW!

And thanks.