The Warmest Colour

[pennswoods]

Title: The Warmest Colour
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson
Pairing: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Rating: General
Links: Ao3 | DeviantArt | Tumblr
Notes: Close your eyes, John. It's an experiment. [Reference] Next up, I'm going to try my hand at some RetirementLock. *gulp*

Comments

[pennswoods.livejournal.com]

Wow. This is a thought-provoking comment because it gets at where one can really go wrong (or get lucky) with a particular reference.

When I first saw the image this was based upon, it was on a flyer, was slightly cropped and faded, and was written in Swedish, which I couldn't read. This all meant I wasn't quite sure if the children being depicted were boys or girls or same or opposite gender. I just remember thinking it looked like a beautiful almost kiss, that the lips were so pretty, and that I would love to use as a reference photo for a Kidlock picture.

I lost the flyer, but saw the image again when recognition for the movie increased and the actresses began speaking about the problems they had with the director, and that's how I learned that these were both girls. I went looking again for different versions of this same photo until I found several, including this one, that worked for me to really get the lips.

I just really wanted to draw John and Sherlock in a pre-kiss moment and the only reason I could think to get them there was that wonderful fanfic trope "It's for an experiment."

All this is to say, I'm happy to know this struck a tender moment for you even though I wasn't conscious of what I was doing by altering the context and characters this way.

[magnetic-pole.livejournal.com]

It's a great, classic composition--the symmetry moderated by the tilt, the clearly defined space between them yet the obviously implication that it's about to be closed by a kiss. I think part of the reason it made me smile was the fact that it felt like it de-fanged the original, if that makes sense--the stereotypes of the original image (sexualized young women, women as objects to be looked at by a viewer via glossy images) were being subverted (boys rather than girls, more ambiguity about the sexuality indicated by the blushes, the obvious hand of the fanartist as opposed to the slick finish of the poster). M.