Professor of Sherlockology and Advanced Snape Studies

For those who happen to be online on a Sunday night, here's that secret WIP I have been working on...

I completed the base coloring on my WIP for emmagrant01's John/Sherlock fic, A Cure for Boredom. This is what it looks like in the final stage before I turn out the lights.

Prior drafts of this piece can be seen at the links below:
Parts I and II
Parts III and IV
Part V
Parts VI and VII
Part VIII



Part IX
I had initially not planned to color in all the wallpaper, but I decided to do so anyway to preserve the full pattern even when it gets dark. I honestly love this wallpaper now and am determined to order a roll. (It looks like there are several distributors in the US, including one in Seattle, so maybe I can convince some of my Seattle-living flisties to help me out on this. I think 10 meters goes for about $200, which is probably ridiculous, but I'm imagining all the scrapbook pages and Christmas gift wrapping that I could do with it, and I'm feeling all inspired to craft.)

I really enjoy how this looks at this stage because it's almost finished. If I wanted to, I could almost stop here, after the addition of a few more darker tones to shade certain areas (e.g. under the sofa). But I'm determined to make this night and have already started laying in deep shadows, which is fun but scary. My next update will be the finished final version - hopefully later today. Stay tuned.

Just documenting the next stages of my WIP for emmagrant01's John/Sherlock fic, A Cure for Boredom. This consists of the tracing and erasing followed by my first bits of coloring.

* For the curious, prior drafts of this piece can be seen at the links below:
Parts I and II
Parts III and IV
Par V


Part VI
I typically use the S (super-fine point) Pitt pens to outline the lineart and then erase the pencil before coloring. I typically use Sanguine for skin and lighter hair and black for everything else. This makes for a very sharp defined line which sometimes doesn't blend well with the colored pencil. To avoid this sharpness, I traced John's and Sherlock's faces using a colored pencil in a similar color and a black colored pencil for the wallpaper design in the background. This means both can be a bit softer and possibly out of focus (ideal for the background, which I've already fudged). Unfortunately, I find it more difficult to erase my pencil marks around colored pencil as it sometimes leads to smearing. Eventually, when i color, the remaining pencil lines mix with the colored pencil and result in a muddier look.

Doesn't Sherlock look horribly demonic here! :D



Part VII And finally the color begins. I scanned this on my mini-laptop, which doesn't have the same color adjustment features for images that I typically use, so the result is more washed out than in RL. I think Sherlock is looking better (and far less demonic) now than in the lineart, but he still looks quite young. I'll be going back later to darken everything once the base colors are in place and that may age him up a bit. However, this is where I find working with real actors as models for fanart very difficult. In trying to incorporate features from the actors in the show, I sort of lose control of my drawing.

However, the biggest thing troubling me right now is the color of the sofa. In numerous photos, it looks to be a sort of puke/olive/greenish/yellowish brown. I don't have a single marker or pencil in precisely this color, so I'm going to have to blend them a bit. Since it's such a big part of the background, I don't want it to clash too horribly with all the other colors. Again, I'll throw it into shadow and darken it later, but I'm a bit lost about the base color. Any advice?

Thank you in particular to dickgloucester and rotaryphones, who gave me terrific advice on how to address some of my anatomy concerns. Their suggestions to pose and photograph the husband (when he cooperates) and Getty images were brilliant examples of how improving one's fanart doesn't always happen (at least for me) through isolated self-study. I'm beginning to think this is true of a lot of learning that happens in life, but before I get all Vygotskian, here are the latest two stages of my WIP based on emmagrant01's John/Sherlock fic, A Cure for Boredom.

* For the curious, here are Parts I and II


Part 3 Taking the advice of rotaryphones who suggested I look at Getty Images for photos, I was able to scare up a few terrific references of men sitting on sofas as a model for Sherlock's legs. I've also been hemming and hawing at the angle of his head and changed that a bit too since the computer is no longer directly in front of him, and I finished out the sofa based on a few stills from the tv series. You will note that Martin and Benedict were staring at me the whole time, and I liked it!


Part 4 Another set of images from Getty helped me with John's feet. I also added that small pile of something to the floor. Not quite sure how many tissues Sherlock used during his 8 hour session. Need to work in the tissue box somewhere and to finish Sherlock's left hand. However, I spent a lot of time on Sherlock's face and hair. I thought he looked far too young (like a teenager) in Part 3, and I wanted him to look more calculating and a bit leaner. Unfortunately, I'm still not happy with how he looks but probably should stop before I overwork the paper. I like the hair though. It's less anime-like and more curly, like Cumberbatch's actual hair in the role. I also reworked Sherlock's shoulders so he looks less tense and like he's sitting back in the sofa and not ramrod straight up. This fits better with his calculating observation of John's reaction to what's on the computer screen.

I'm planning to do the wallpaper, sort of. It's more complex than I like to do for backgrounds. And I might ignore the patterned throw pillow since that's also going to complexity the design. What do you guys think? And then coloring is going to be a real challenge, which I may fudge. The only real light source in the room,as described in the story, is the laptop screen itself. This is going to challenge the hell out of me when it comes to shading, and I'm already imagining doing everything with a blue tinge.

Day 2 of my Cumbercrush. We'll see how much longer this lasts...much of today was consumed with teaching and research related stuff as I anticipated. And may I just add, I was ON FIRE in class tonight!

In any case, last night I spent some more time working on my Sherlock WIP and wanted to post an update for some feedback. The picture is behind the cut.

( This image contains spoilers for Reichenbach... )