Deviation Actions
Description
The July instance of Let’s Draw Sherlock has a five color palate. I’m on a dumb computer now that my work box is dead - new box in 30 days, I hope - so digital drawing was right out. I gave it a shot, but the delay between motion and result was nearly a full second, and straight lines resulted. Unacceptable.
I do a lot of paint inversions, however, and figured, “How much harder can it be to digitally color elements laid down in black ink on white paper?” Turns out it’s pretty deucedly difficult, especially when one has forgotten how and is too tired to go back online on the slowest machine ever in hopes of elucidation. Thus, the first image (not shown) is the piece according to the rules, and the second (above) is so that I can live with myself in the morning.
Several elements come into the design:
1) The fall figure, using the inside of my own head as a reference. Erroneously as it turns out - feet were down throughout the shot.2) The clock/reticule - something about one of the scope views I looked at was reminiscent of a clock, and broken timing being critical, well…
3) The windows by which the fall takes place - directly from video reference, but since I forgot how to count, rather inaccurate.
4) What I imagine John Watson’s writing and signature might have looked like after the fact - but with the Watson opposite Jeremy Brett, since I find it more likely for his hand to be moved as such.
5) Signature is brushwork.
6) Text is done with paint and a toothpick I gnawed on a bit first and then ground hard as I wrote to break it up some.
7) The text is the opener to The Final Problem, and dear gods, I think I actually managed to get it correctly printed for all that the hand is deliberately scrafaffled.
Upshot: An inversion I love, and a piece meeting the July requirements that came out so horribly that looking at it nearly makes me give back the pizza I had earlier.
Other technical notes: Text, signature, falling figure with splatter, clock/reticule, and windows are each their own paintings layered in Photoshop. An hour’s painting or two, and a 20 minute scan and edit task that took two hours instead, as 4mb of ram and slow just doesn’t go.
Poor, poor computer.