Posts Tagged ‘baker street tinies’

J is for John

Monday, March 7th, 2011

J is for John by Amy Crook

J is for John by Amy Crook

My second Sherlock Holmes/Edward Gorey pastiche, this one is based off of “J is for James who took lye by mistake” from The Gashlycrumb Tinies and BBC’s new Sherlock tv series.

Click the image if you’d like to really see the ridiculously obsessive line work — the wallpaper was particularly labor-intensive, and I have no one but myself to blame. I’ve been in a mood lately to do work like this, that involves a lot of tiny pen-and-ink details, and unlike similar attempts when I was younger, I find it rather meditative now. I often put on audio recordings and just sit and let the two things filter into my brain, though there are frequent breaks to IM friends and goof off online, not to mention stretching my back and resting my poor hand.

Now that I’ve got the techniques down, I have to figure out what I can do with them that isn’t a parody, pastiche or plain old copy, though.

J is for John who took lye by mistake, 8.5″x5″ pen and ink on sketchbook paper, sold.

You can still get the pair of them as handmade blank greeting cards on Etsy, though!

Categories: Daily Art, People, Figures and Faces, Series and Books, Things I'm a Fan Of
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S is for Sherlock

Thursday, February 24th, 2011

S is for Sherlock by Amy Crook

S is for Sherlock by Amy Crook

Edward Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb Tinies is my absolute favourite of works — I get to die first, after all — and so when I was experimenting with my Micron pens the urge to parody BBC’s new Sherlock by mashing up the two was irresistible.

Click the image if you’d like to really see the ridiculously obsessive line work, or just enjoy the smaller version where it all blends into a texture.

I decided to combine the pose from “S is for Susan who perished of fits” and the caption and setting from “N is for Neville who died of ennui” in order to capture the essence of modern Sherlock in his state of utter boredom. The window isn’t precisely true to the show (there’s an ornate railing of some kind outside, and curtains), but I really liked the boring brickwork from the N page, so I copied that faithfully and tediously.

I never really thought I’d learn to like shading in such a time-consuming style, but I’m already thinking about other ways I can make use of it. I’ve already got plans to do a companion piece to this for poor John, since Gorey set me up so very well with “J is for James who took lye by mistake.”

S is for Sherlock who died of ennui, 8.5″x6.5″ pen and ink on sketchbook paper, sold.

You can still get the pair of them as handmade blank greeting cards on Etsy, though!

Categories: Daily Art, People, Figures and Faces, Series and Books, Things I'm a Fan Of, Whimsical and Strange
Tags: , , , , , , ,
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