Art for SALE!

Hiya Folks, Sorry I haven't posted anything in a while and these two pictures, as well as the Holmes & the Hound picture, are, more or less, my excuse for not posting anything in quite some time. These pictures are for an exhibiton held at the Athens of Indiana Arts Studio & Gallery.

The first picture out of this post is titled "A Very Merry Unbirthday" and is currently for sale for $50, as well as the comic called "The Great Orator" (you kind readers might notice that it was a quick sketch a couple of posts ago, but now in COLOR). To my utter surprise, though, "The Great Orator" has already been sold off and is currently on its merry way to a good home. The "Holmes & The Hound" picture is for $100 at the Gallery if anyone is interested, all the pictures are, approximately, 8" by 10". It was an honor to submit some pieces to this tremendous event for this utterly awesome gallery.

Cheers,

A. Taylor

Thanks to Sharon Gerow, Nina Cunnigham, and the other great friends that helped me get up off my lazy bum to submit these pieces.

Holmes & The Hound

Howdy folks, sorry I haven't posted in a while, but I have recently been working on a series of drawings and paintings for an art show that is coming up in October. This is one of the pictures that I've been working on entitled "Holmes & The Hound," which is a bit of a fun drawing based on The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle. This was drawn with a Micron pen (point 01) and was "painted" using an inkwash technique, using both waterproof and regular ink. I then used a dip pen and waterproof ink to write out the text on the parchment which tells the story of the Hound of the Baskervilles. I used white acrylic paint to do a bit of fog and other effects. I had a great time illustrating this picture and hopefully you great folks will find this in a frame pretty soon.

There will be more drawings and I shall hopefully post them in good time.

Cheers,

A. Taylor

The Detective Scribbles, No. 13, Sherlock Holmes

Here is the last drawing in the series entitled "the Detective Scribbles," and what better way to end a series than with the world-renowned and, hands-down, greatest and most influencial fictional detective that has ever graced the world of literature, Sherlock Holmes.
The violin-playing, smoke-stack that is Sherlock Holmes was introduced in 1887 in The Study in Scarlet which spurred a world-wide fervor for the people at that time. No one, besides Edgar Allan Poe with his creation of C. Auguste Dupin (which was part of the inspiration for Holmes' creator), had ever written of such an ingenious detective. In 1887, a doctor by the name of Arthur Doyle was struggling with his practice and found that he had some time to kill, so he had written some detective stories (note that this was around the ballpark of 1887, sometime before he wrote Scarlet). Now the curious beginnings of Holmes are quite fascinating, even some of the myths of the fictional detective have been set in stone are quite curious, too.
Most know the story now, with the newly released sequel of Sherlock Holmes (starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law) entitled Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows as a sort of catalyst to the researcher and reader of the stories, Doyle had attended Edinburgh University and one of his instructors was a brilliant doctor by the name of Joseph Bell, who was much like Holmes in every way. Bell was the physician to Queen Victoria, so he was, needless to say, quite renowned for his medical practices, but he wasn't only renowned for his way around the medical table, but he was famed for his role as a diagnostician (which helped when he was researching a particular case in a borough in London in 1888, although the murderer was never brought to justice, and that case was the case of Jack the Ripper). Bell could deduce from a person's appearance their habits, their maladies, even their occupation, just through pure observation and careful notes. His brilliance enthralled the young Doyle and he thought that it was fitting to put those characteristics of deduction into the character of Sherlock Holmes (who was originally called Sherringford Hope, I believe, but I may be wrong) and cast himself as Holmes' Boswell (as Holmes alludes to on occasions in the stories), Doctor Watson (who was originally called Ormond Sacker, I think, but, I very well could be wrong with this one, too). Anyway, after Doyle created the inquisitive and ingenious detective, the public would entrust Doyle to write them for years to come, no matter what.
When it came to the the winter of 1893, however, Doyle, much like Poirot's creator Agatha Christie became years later, was absolutely fed up with Holmes. After he had been with Holmes nearly a decade, and writing countless amounts of short stories and some novels, Doyle killed off the world's favorite fictional detective in a deathly battle with Holmes' nemesis, the unscrupulous Professor James Moriarty, at Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. Even though it was a great weight off of Doyle's shoulders, and just when he was preparing to set off in a new direction with the brutish character of Professor Challenger (which would later inspire the Jurassic Park movies), the public was absolutely outraged that Sherlock Holmes was "dead and gone" (that is only the approximate quote from Doyle, not the absolute exact quote). Doyle, quite reluctantly, put pen to paper, once again, and penned Holmes' next adventure explaining his "death" in 1903, nearly ten years after his fall, in the short story "The Adventure of the Empty House." I quite enjoy this story mainly because of Watson's reaction to Holmes' triumphant return (because Holmes is, at first, disguised as an aged bookseller). After he sheds his disguise, Watson turns around to see the gaunt and aquiline figure of Holmes and Watson faints on the spot.
After Holmes' return, Doyle was roped into doing more stories about the detective, calculating a grand total of fifty-six short stories and four novels, I believe. Even though Doyle went on to write more stories about the Boer War and more Professor Challenger stories, Doyle and his brainchild of Sherlock Holmes, the great monster of a character that Doyle created on pure whim, would be etched on the panels of history as the greatest fictional character that had ever graced the pages of literature.
Since, Doyle created Holmes there has also been a singular illustrator that has become quite famous for creating the look that Doyle never meant to create for his character. There is a particular story that involves the illustration process at that time. Doyle had sent a letter to a famous illustrator by the name of Walter Paget to become the illustrator to the famous detective's stories, but, merely by chance, his brother, Sidney, opened the letter instead, and took the job as the illustrator for the Strand Magazine's Sherlock Holmes Stories. Paget used his brother's aquiline features for partial inspiration for the great detective, but there is one detail that Paget created that shall forever immortalize the silhouette of the detective. In the story entitled "Silver Blaze" (which is actually the first Sherlock Holmes story I had ever read) there is a moment that Paget illustrates in which Holmes and Watson travel to the country to investigate a case. In that opportune moment, Paget illustrates Holmes wearing what is widely considered the stereotypical uniform for the detective: an Inverness cape and a deerstalker cap. Although it was simply a couple of fine strokes of the pen, it has forever set in stone the fine silhouette of Sherlock Holmes.
Now, I know that I shall only ramble on and on about the finer details of the Holmes stories, in short, I have read the stories ever since I was a young kid, so I take great joy in researching about Doyle and Holmes. So, I found it fitting that the final detective in this series should be the grandest detective of all, Mister Sherlock Holmes and his incredible creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Notes: This was drawn with a dip pen with waterproof ink and a fine point pen to create the sort of haggard and bohemian appearance of Holmes. Thanks for enduring the rambling.

The Detective Scribbles, No. 9, Mycroft Holmes

See, I am a man of my word, somewhat. Here is a new detective to adorn this set of scribbles. This time it's Sherlock Holmes' older brother, Mycroft Holmes. I have said before in numerous posts that Mycroft is one of my favorite characters in the Sherlock Holmes canon, this is mainly because of how enigmatic he is and how humorously Dr. John Watson describes him in their first meeting, in the short story entitled "The Greek Interpreter". When they meet for the first time Watson describes him as being a very corpulent individual and when he shakes hands with him Watson describes it as grabbing the flipper of a seal.
In the stories Sherlock describes him as being a true definition of a bureaucrat, as stating that he IS the British Government in various situations. Although seven years Sherlock's senior, Mycroft is quite superior to Sherlock in his inductive reasoning and having a pure analytical mind, but has "no energy" for actually pursuing the work of a detective. Sherlock says in "The Greek Interpreter" that "If the art of the detective began and ended in reasoning from an arm-chair, my brother would be the greatest criminal agent that ever lived." (Note: this quote also describes Hercule Poirot, I think, since he practically sits in his arm-chair and basically goes through all the analysis in his "little grey cells") What I also like about the character of Mycroft Holmes is the look of pure shock on Watson's face as soon as he sets eyes on him. I might have said this before, but it is worth repeating, but I think that it is fascinating that anyone, in the whole of humanity, would have a far superior mind to that of Sherlock Holmes, but it seems rather obvious that that sort of mind lives in an observer like Mycroft Holmes, who sits at his perch at the Diogenes Club basically observing his surroundings, basically gawking and analysing the outside like some sort of obese owl, which helped tremendously in the drawing process (also the monocle bit and his overall structure is based off of astronomer Sir Patrick Moore). Although Mycroft has only shown up (or even mentioned) in four of the stories, he is one of my personal favorite detectives, although he is basically sedentary in his arm-chair at the Diogenes Club. I think that both Mycroft Holmes, Hercule Poirot, and Nero Wolfe go hand-in-hand as being the perfect analytical detectives, whose cases begin and end in an armchair, basically.

Notes: The drawing above and below are drawn with waterproof ink and the use of a dip pen. Red permanent marker was used to enhance the second one and pencil to do some minor details, although Mycroft isn't so much the jovial type I thought it would be entertaining all the same, due to the holidays. Also, this is also a good time to have at least one of the Holmes brothers up here considering the amazing movie that recently was released, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, where the incomparable and fantastic Stephen Fry, who is well known for his comedic talents and his reading of the Harry Potter books in the UK, plays the bureaucratic Mycroft, and does a fantastic job. Another lovely British actor has put on the bureaucratic attire for the new, and updated, version of the Sherlock Holmes stories. In the series Sherlock, which has been created by the brilliant minds of Steven Moffat & Mark Gatiss (of Doctor Who fame), the co-creator Mark Gatiss stars as Sherlock's stiffly starched brother in the series, and also does a fine job.

Keep a sharp eye out for my next post.

The Holmes Brothers

I have to say that both Sherlock Holmes and his brother, Mycroft, have always interested me ever since I first read "The Greek Interpreter" by Doyle. When I first read the story I was nearly as shocked as Watson was when he found that Sherlock had a brother, who, Sherlock admits, is far superior in an intellectual sense than Sherlock, which seems almost impossible to visualize. I must say that I enjoy the interaction between the Holmes brothers in the story when Watson witnesses both Sherlock and Mycroft having a sort of battle of wits as they are looking out the window and analyzing and using pure inductive powers. I was just enthralled by the scene in the Diogenes Club and I liked how it also reflected how alike both of the Holmes brothers are. Both Mycroft and Sherlock share almost the same immense intellect and how they guess a man's profession and other details of a person from pure observation. So, with this in mind, I wondered what their signatures would look like.

 It is clearly stated in the story of "The Greek Interpreter" the natures of both of the Holmes brothers. Mycroft is basically very sloth-like and, my favorite line is, when Watson shakes hands with Mycroft he describes it as "shacking the flipper of a seal", or something around those lines. Mycroft sits in his chair most of the day at the Diogenes Club and observes the world from his room. Sherlock, on the other hand, is a great ball of energy that must be on the move every minute of every day. Mycroft himself observes that Sherlock is the energetic one in the family. I just thought that their signatures should reflect such an attitude with both of the brothers.

Mycroft's signature, the first one at the beginning of this post, is far more official, since Mycroft is a government bureaucrat, and is the signature that he would typically use when signing such forms. The second one, just below the ramble you are now reading, is the one that he uses on a typical, letter-writing basis, which reflects his pure laziness and sloth-like attitude with matters. Sherlock's signature, on the other hand, is more of a swooping signature, full of energy. The first one on this post is much like Mycroft's official signature, this signature is the one that Sherlock would possibly use for his "official" letter-writing, if he were writing to diplomats saying that he retrieved the Lost Diamond of the Maharaja

 or something of that sort. The second signature of Sherlock's is possibly one that he could use to write Lestrade or someone that he had found out the culprit of the crime or that he had found something.

I merely thought that it was an interesting experiment to play around with the Holmes Brothers signatures, basically to see what they would look like and how their signatures reflect their nature. Both signatures were written in blue waterproof ink with the use of a dip pen, sorry about the smudges, at least on Sherlock's, it was intentional with Mycroft's common signature.

Also, if you would like to see the scene with Mycroft and Sherlock, I have posted below a video of the Jeremy Brett version of "The Greek Interpreter" if you would like to take a gander. Sorry about the shoddy quality.

Until next time, keep a sharp eye out for my next post.