Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Why I Became A Sherlockian

Photo from "The Dancing Men".

Holmes having the nerve to put a gun straight to the head of a murdering scumbag in this episode was very satisfying indeed. It takes a real abusive dirtbag for a deeply conscientious and pacifist person like Holmes to finally overcome a very strong moral instinct to preserve life, and gangsters certainly fit the bill, although there are worse then mere gangsters. I can think of some in Northern Ireland evil enough to deserve it after what they did to me when I was living over there, when I stood up to them- with me finally having to use the US Senate and Republic of Ireland's Justice Department to come down on them hard after years of abuse and infiltration of my resources, because the US State Department caved to their pressure and refused to help me. (Some of the culprits are in top government positions post-1998). I am thankful to this day for the Republic's and Michael Mcdowell's justice department being willing to corroborate all the evidence of IRA targeting to the US Senate on my behalf, as well as a Taoiseach who has no love for IRAryan nationalism. Because of the peace agreement, the Crown's hands were tied; the UK could not help me in any way other than provide legal aid, otherwise the peace agreement would break down quickly. So I had to strike the scumbags down from Washington and from Dublin.

It's a deep deep struggle to regain one's moral instincts after being plunged into the filth of hatred against one's will. Holmes as a character of fiction can volley back and forth between focused hatred and good conscience, which real human beings find much, much harder to do. Even now I have buttons of rage that would have me pulling back the hammer on a Walther in double time if I had to face those people again, or anyone whose complete lack of conscience I sniffed out by observing heartless and murderous tactics. And it only takes abuse by such people for those buttons to be put in place, and it takes a whole lot of love, compassion and nurturing for a long time for them to fade away.

If Holmes were a person, his innocence would have been kept in place by his intense natural curiosity and his childlike simple conscience which refuses to see shades of gray in understanding right and wrong. Nobody should lose the joy and pleasure of such a perspective. But that innocence attracts the attention of evil, inevitably, because those who choose to compromise that innate moral innocence can smell out kindness in others and go straight for attempting to convert the easy prey through abuse. As such, if Holmes had been real, he would have had a vicious learning curve of danger and exploitation which would have hardened his senses with hate, in order to protect his own innocence.

This is the whole essence of why I became a Sherlockian as a path to mental recovery after being reconned and smashed by Sinn Fein/IRA, and delivering them a much harder political blow that has disbanded their financial support network in the US and placed them under FBI censure. Not because Holmes to me is a symbolic hero, but because I understand his motive to protect his own decency, I share his anger at the compromise of character that leads to human iniquity and its desire to cause suffering and spread its nature, and I share his strengths that could easily cause me to act as a predator of predators. Holmes for me has been better than a councilor for PTSD, because we understand each other, and he stoically reminds me that I can pick up and go on, and be rid of my anger whenever I like.

Friday, January 16, 2015

I finished this graphite drawing of Jeremy Brett today.  "Jeremy Darling!" 19" x 24", graphite and Conte on Bristol.



Monday, January 12, 2015

Ventures into Sherlockian art


Since I last posted here six months ago I have been dreadfully ignoring my two standard blogs, mostly to build an enormous library of Jeremy Brett's photo history on Tumblr, now with the assistance of one of Jeremy's precious loved ones. (I never would have imagined I'd get from there to here, but I have, and it's folly not to know and believe in my heart that he is somehow involved.) I've also wasted my time venting my sociopolitical spleen spouting my opinions on Facebook, mostly because recovery from politically motivated trauma overseas is now starting to wind down.  But really I'd rather be nowhere else than in front of my easel making art, or making poetry, or writing, or picking up my guitar and practicing.

Graphite study of Jeremy Brett, September 2014


In the last year that I have acquired the courage to become a googlable entity regardless of visibility or criticism, it was mostly toward one singular purpose: to become fearless enough to re-embrace being an artist.  She's a strange muse.  She wants all the attention, but the vulnerability and focus she demands required building confidence about a lot of things.  Confidence about my past, confidence regarding mistakes, and successes; confidence in spite of my body, my gender, my hangups, my human faults.  Faith in my potential, faith in a future that I somehow still manage to possess.


"Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes", Nov. 3, 2014


Art is everything.  I have almost universally ceased in any judgment of any form of creativity in others; there is no such thing as 'critic', only 'journey', and suggestions to make it fulfilling.  The point of art is not product, but productivity.  Anything will do, any medium is good.  Anything that paints the walls of my cage with so much adventure and beauty that if I believe hard enough, and work hard enough, and love deeply enough, the painting becomes a doorway.  As a portrait artist, that doorway is being able to see into other souls, and become them.  The media becomes the method, graphite becomes Stanislavski, and the drawing, the painting, becomes a person.  Not a depiction, not an illustration, not a cartoon; if the eyes follow you around the room, then my methods in some ways might be a bit inflexible, and others not developed enough, but always breathing and alive.  That's the goal.  That's the point.

William Gillette, graphite study, 9x12, Dec. 2014


I adore traditional media.  I can feel something come to life under my hands, not in pixels, but in reality.  Feeling, touching, tangibility.


"William Gillette as Sherlock Holmes-a Color Interpretation" December 2014

The fact that it's almost always either Sherlock Holmes or Jeremy Brett is immaterial.  Holmes is my companion on a journey.  He's me.  As for Jeremy...well, there are times I suspect that he believes in me more often than I in myself, yet he has not stepped physical foot on this world in 19 years.  The irony of this observation is not lost on me.  Holmes' skepticism and desire to see through the stark clockwork of reality feeds my intellect and atheistic determination to reduce humanity to bare motive.  But having Jeremy in my life is going one step beyond clockwork and motive and human mechanism, to the power I possess in making the universe a magical place through embracing him.  Holmes is my mind.  Jeremy is my heart.  And to be honest, it's a journey I relish undertaking, every minute of every day, sometimes with exasperation, but never one regret.


Saturday, June 28, 2014

Artwork: Color Study

Color studies:

Currently working on a color study of Jeremy Brett, from a still of "The Greek Interpreter".

Finished 6/29





Sherlock Holmes and the Curious Question of Peter Knife

Here's a canon shortie for you, darlings.  I woke up this morning with this strange story in my head, so I wrote it down.

Sherlock Holmes and The Curious Question of Peter Knife, Blackfoot Tracker


Illustration of canon Holmes, and Chief Mountain, Blackfoot

Work Text:

After my friend Holmes had his adventures in Tibet during that Great Hiatus, and after his defeat of Moriarty, he often subscribed to such outlandish notions of identity that I would have to take pause in my studies and writings to digest these odd new workings of his inner mind. This, as we all know, was never at rest.
Today, he insisted that he not only believed in reincarnation, but that he could positively recall who he was in his previous life. He maintained that he was no respectable doctor or hunter upon the Downs of Her Majesty’s Britain, but a Red Indian, of all things. Not only did he openly and passionately subscribe to notions outside Christianity, but well outside the realm of Science, and I was laughing, about to gently chide him in this manner.
“I was not the man you see before you,” said Holmes, pacing the drawing-room of Baker Street like a great panther in a zoo enclosure. “I was a red Indian man of the Western Blackfoot tribe. But not just any man,” he went on proudly. “I was a tracker.” His chest puffed out and he smiled, his briar pipe chuffing merrily. “My name was Peter Knife. And aside from the very long hair which I wore in a magnificent braid down the center of my back, I looked almost exactly like the man standing before you now.”
I laughed heartily, but he gave me a look of such doleful intensity that I had to clear my throat and engage him to carry on, which he did with gusto. “I could tell if the lightest deer had passed through the bracken up to a month previously.” he said. “By the position of the leaves on the ground, the small ticks upon the branches, the smell of the American lynx that had marked the adjacent tree.” My eyebrows rose in surprise at such incredible detail. “I was so good at what I did that I was able to hunt for two teepees, and uphold two wives!”
I was so shocked at this exhortation that I very nearly lost control of my own pipe, and gazed upon him with the kind of incredulity reserved for an uncanny madman. I knew that Holmes was odd, but not mad; however his blithe acceptance of married existence was not only a shock, but to admit that he practiced bigamy in a previous life, after knowing his monklike qualities for nearly a decade here in London, I have to say that I laughed again twice as hard- and this time for at least a full minute. This was a side of Holmes I had never witnessed before, and as I settled down to a teary-eyed chortle, he looked at me from the corners of his eyes thoughtfully, with his arms casually crossed, eyebrows raised, and waited for me to finish with the ghost of a smile upon his keen features and thin lips.
I could not remain silent while listening to this incredible and seriously delivered insistence by my friend any longer. “Two wives.” I remarked breathlessly. “Two wives! So you were both a savage and bigamist! Tell me, why do I see none of this side of you now?” I chided him.
“I was not a savage, Watson.” he chuffed, somewhat incensed at the notion. “I wore my beautiful deerskins and my magnificent beaded breastplate with as much cleanliness and pride as I do my waistcoat. I simply used bear fat rendered with sage to coif my lovely braid instead of lime pomade as I do now.” He raised his chin proudly. “And two wives in a previous life is why you do not see me with one now. Have you any idea how difficult it is to uphold two households and the nightly duties of a husband to two families and two insatiably fecund women?”
I nearly choked on my pipe a second time and erupted heartily a third time, for each time I heard Holmes say such things as I had never before heard from the man, I would laugh harder. Holmes knew that my preference for fairylike petiteness and blonde beauty in women was nearly legendary, so to hear such amazing words from this man indicating his very preference in women was nearly more than I could stand with a sober demeanour. For not even I, after a decade, could suspect that he had any preference in women at all. This tale had the hopes of becoming more lurid than Boccacio’s Decameron, which in coming fully and soberly from my very sincere friend in all earnestness, would create a legendary exchange such that the joyful memories of old age would constantly refresh and brighten my eyes until my death.
Fortunately, I was most certainly not disappointed. “Fecund!” I nearly shouted with laughter. “So you are telling me that you liked women, practiced bigamy, and preferred them plump. Is that,” I laughed, “what you are telling me!”


“Quite.” said Holmes. “Certainly, isn’t a plump woman going to remain warm during the frightful winters of the Plains and mountains of western America?” he asked. “Wouldn’t a child remain warm in her belly? Yes, I was the sleek cat of the forest, but proud, thick women who moved as gracefully as the great buffalo and with chests the breadth of their flanks, would make my heart nearly skip a beat at the thought of their encompassing warmth and comfort.” His bright eyes regarded me again, staring at him in shock, and this time he smiled broadly. “You have yet to experience such joys in your preference for dollies in lace. But I assure you from the bottom of my Bohemian soul that the great and noble savage knows where real comfort is to be found, although I might have been too keen in seeking to repeat the experience twice.” This time, my chortling remained at an incredulous constant, the Times long having been folded and slapped on my knee several times in my exultations of laughter.
Holmes’ face became serious, however, and he gained a faraway look in his deep gray eyes that gave his gaze a wistful countenance. “I remember how they cried when I died of the white man’s disease.” His lecture took a sober turn. “It was a strange funeral.” He went on. “I was wrapped tightly like they do their babies, lovingly plaited by both aging lovelies and my five children, in tightly woven grass and vine from neck to feet as if my body were the beloved treasure of a grandmother’s basket. I watched my own burial and took such comfort in the loving cries of my entire tribe.” His tone was faraway and it sang in a high and sustained note such that I nearly imagined the scents of cedar smoke and sage, and imagined his great thin body stretched out upon a shallow platform aloft a great grassy hill among many relatives similarly fed to the carrion birds in such strange grandeur.


Holmes breathed deeply and looked away from gazing out the window. “Mighty England hasn’t the depth of character for such compassion. The understandings of right and wrong of the free savages may seem uncharacteristically simple for such an exultatious mind as my own, and I may represent all those pedantic virtues over which Britain’s international infamy among nations holds sway,” sighed Holmes in an acidic tone, “but my simplistic morality and notion of decency is what gives me power as a man, Watson. All else is detail in knowledge for which my mind utterly hungers, but shades of gray in morality, most certainly not.” He went back to gazing down at the mad to and fro of Baker Street outside the window.
“Yes, Holmes, but two plump wives.” I laughed, citing our well worn and respectable British codes of monogamy which insisted that women be tackled one at a time at the very most. "You yourself embody so many moral shades of gray if the definitions of our world are anything to go by."
“Certainly not. My situation was not immoral if they both agreed to the arrangement. They most definitely didn’t want me in their hair all the time during the freezing months, trying to make conversation out of such wintry boredom. I was always a nightmare while bored, when not attempting to pull her under a pile of buffalo skins to pass the time. So you see me now, not bothering with the attempt this time around.”
I could not resist the opportunity to tease him just this little bit. “But surely, Holmes, you must crave such company at the loneliest of times. Surely. Even for a fecund, Bohemian woman?” the smile played at my face.
“Indeed.” admitted Holmes. My eyebrows raised into my very hairline at such open admission. “But I have this work to uphold, to the chagrin of my empty bed. The shallow jibings of so many men such as yourself in preference for all the social norms I naturally despise, is too much for a sincere and earnest heart to endure. I uphold my savage morality in all earnestness in exchange, and allow what the world thinks is my cold and mechanical heart to dream for me, when I know the world isn’t looking.”
This baffling statement left me silent.
He looked over at me with a fire lighting his eyes. “…And my morality is as simple, and as savage, as it gets.” he went back to the mixture in his pipe, huffing it as deeply in quiet countenance and hawklike profile as I ever saw him do, and for that moment, his rod-straight figure was as peaceful and majestic in the thin, silvery winter light of England as those great mountains in western America.

Sir Doyle, left, and Spopee, Blackfoot, right

Sunday, June 1, 2014

Operation Canon Holmes

Operation Canon Holmes is a success. 

The purpose of this project was to incorporate Strand Magazine illustrator Sidney Paget's idea of Holmes, and evolve it from basically a fashion magazine cartoon to the actual closest approximation of the Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle's head.

In the first story of the canon, A Study In Scarlet, Doyle describes him thus: "His very person and appearance were such as to strike the attention of the most casual observer. ...he was so excessively lean that he seemed to be considerably taller. His eyes were sharp and piercing...and his thin, hawk-like nose gave his whole expression an air of alertness and decision. His chin, too, had the prominence and squareness which mark the man of determination."

My process was to take the most detailed picture of Holmes from Sidney Paget's illustrative work (difficult to find one, admittedly) and work with it, adding enough detail to get at least a comic book approximation of Holmes, in the first pencil study.

Then, using an actor model whose placement of facial features and skeletal frame approximated the closest description of Holmes, in this case Adrian Brody, I used his basic facial shape and added/altered the features which Conan Doyle described in his literature.

Myth busted #1: Sherlock was NOT SEXY. He was an egghead with very odd looking features. Conan Doyle did reiterate later on in life that Holmes was anything but handsome; rather, he was *striking*. Doyle was apathetic to the more romantic depictions of Holmes in theatre.

So here's my as-realistic-as-possible reconstruction of Doyle's canon Holmes, aged between 35 and 45. Ish. Sidney Paget illustration for comparison.


Fig 1: Sidney Paget's original illustration:


Fig.2: My take on the Paget illustration as study 1, and the larger more realistic study 2.


Fig.3: Study 2.


Thursday, May 29, 2014

Still Life With John Watson


Tonight's pencil study is of the John Watson that occupies my head canon.  I'm happy with this, so the itch to draw gets itchier.

His face is entirely from my head, however I might have borrowed Glen Hansard's eyes and then changed those too.

"Still Life With John Watson", props, Strand Magazine, graphite on Bristol. by A.R. Carter