A Little Break: Taking in a Show

Basil Rathbone is by far
my favorite Holmes

We've been busy in the Larsen family lately. Xty and I both work freelance jobs, me computer graphics and her pastry cheffing (see her awesome food blog here). So... we work weird hours whenever an email or order comes in requiring a quick turnaround on a birthday cake or business card. That's fine and it usually allows us to steal a few hours during the week for a movie matinee when the theaters are empty of children and talkers. With holiday baking and my new website development sideline we haven't had a chance to sneak away for several weeks. A few days ago we finally got the chance and decided to go see the new Sherlock Holmes movie.


Now I am a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes. I have read all 50+ original stories by Arthur Conan Doyle and LOVED the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce movies of the '30s and '40s. I was not such a big fan of the Guy Ritchie remake several years ago and I found out the other day that I didn't like his second effort either. I mean come on, we all know Holmes was a decent boxer but to give him ninja skills to take out 4 assailants at once is ridiculous and takes away from both the story and Holmes' essence. He's a thinker, not an action hero.

Tom Richmond's
version of Holmes.

Anyway, when we got home I decided I wanted to try to draw Sherlock Holmes... the real Sherlock Holmes, Basil Rathbone style. The results were disastrous. I don't know if I was just having a bad day or what but I couldn't get anywhere with it. After much erasing I decided it might help to look at how other caricaturists (did you notice how I cleverly lumped myself into that group there?) have handled him by doing a Google image search. One jumped right out at me. Of course when I followed the image back to its original home page I found that it belonged to none other than my caricaturist idol, Tom Richmond. He's the guy who literally wrote the book that got me started in this.


I turned the page on my sketchpad and quickly copied his drawing as I saw it. Boom, just like that it came out looking good. Why couldn't I think of this on my own? I definitely need to spend a little more time copying other people's caricatures to help see what to do and how to draw the different facial features effectively.


So I took my lightly penciled sketch, got out the new set of colored pastels I hadn't yet had a chance to try out and went to town creating my first full-color drawing. Here is what I came up with. Yes, I copied it from another artist but I didn't trace it or anything and I colored and shaded it myself so it's only half cheating. I'm pretty happy with the result and can't wait for the day when some newbie is copying my work. There you have it... Sherlock Holmes.