and here is your regularly scheduled Watson’s Sketchbook, part 2 of the Golden Pince-Nez. (part 1)

An announcement: as I’ve posted elsewhere on social media, I have been going by Lee and using he/him pronouns with friends for a while now, and I’m now inviting everyone to use this for me :)

Also, the second volume of Watson’s Sketchbook is available for purchase, along with a restock of Volume 1 and some of my other work!

Here’s a new update, which takes place right after the end of the Illustrious Client.

I wanted to try a different style! This is drawn with the default vine charcoal brush on Procreate. I had a few reasons...because I’m drawing a full graphic novel right now and want to flex different muscles in this project. But I also think it is appropriate as this marks a change within the dynamic of these characters. (and of course, the horny reason: I love to draw body hair and a thick line style just wasn't delivering the results I wanted.)

Font is 'Neucha.'

Thanks for reading!

"I was nearer him than anyone else, and yet I was always conscious of the gap between."

"Observations of the case of James Dodd" refers, of course, to the Blanched Soldier.

Housekeeping: No hand lettering today because I'm trying to be nice to my wrist...the font is 'Neucha'. Also, Volume 2 of the sketchbook (and a restock of Volume 1 as long as all my other books) will be available August 20 if all goes well. I'll share more specifics as we get closer to that date!

And more:

I posted some paintings I made on Bluesky. These are for an in-progress YA graphic novel about 19th century art and queer history.

As AI allows mediocre content to assume a veneer of finish and polish, I find myself getting more and more interested in the process of what went into a piece of art.

What do we lose when we jump to the end of creative work? What can we only learn by doing, what can be discovered through process, what cannot be replaced by a shiny mimicry machine?

One of the characters in this graphic novel is an artist, and he spends the book working on the below piece. Through researching and executing it, I was able to place myself in his head and discover new traits about his character and how he experiences the narrative. The book will be better because I took the time. Also I loved doing it!

Here’s that piece in context of a WIP page (needs color!). I’m excited to see how it all comes across in the finished book and more than excited to share it!

“He gave no explanations and I asked for none. By long experience I had learned the wisdom of obedience.”

meanwhile, with Holmes and the estimable Miss Winter...

"I knelt by the injured man and turned that awful face to the light of the lamp. The vitriol was eating into it everywhere and dripping from the ears and the chin. One eye was already white and glazed. The other was red and inflamed. The features which I had admired a few minutes before were now like some beautiful painting over which the artist has passed a wet and foul sponge. They were blurred, discoloured, inhuman, terrible. ... I could have wept over the ruin had I not remembered very clearly the vile life which had led up to so hideous a change."

As the story goes, Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle had dinner together once in 1889. Doyle left with new inspiration for his detective character, and wrote the second Holmes story, the Sign of the Four (in which we see a much more languid, witty, cocaine-using Holmes...Wilde's influence?). Wilde left with inspiration to write The Picture of Dorian Gray, a story which uses very similar language to the above passage to tie together ideas of beauty and sin with horror and portraiture. I like to think that this passage in the Illustrious Client was Doyle paying homage to his old (and long-dead at time of publication) friend.

Part 2 of the Illustrious Client. The fact that most of this is canon is further proof why it is my favorite Holmes story:

"Both Holmes and I had a weakness for the Turkish bath. It was over a smoke in the pleasant lassitude of the drying-room that I have found him less reticent and more human than anywhere else. On the upper floor of the Northumberland Avenue establishment there is an isolated corner where two couches lie side by side, and it was on these that we lay upon the day my narrative begins. I had asked him whether anything was stirring, and for answer he had shot his long, thin, nervous arm out of the sheets which enveloped him and had drawn an envelope from the inside pocket of the coat which hung beside him." I'M NOT MAKING THIS UP YOU GUYS

fun fact - We were in Harrogate a few years ago for the excellent comic convention Thought Bubble. It turned out that they have the oldest surviving Victorian era Turkish Baths, so Nate and I visited them. Complete with such details as a hot room full of cartoonists (the tattoos on display!), Turkish tiling by way of English imagination, and an original 'Crapper' toilet (google it). When I watched the Granada adaptation episode of The Illustrious Client, I immediately recognized the baths as the filming location! Very worth a visit if you are in the area.

The end of this chapter!

Watson’s Sketchbook is back with the Red-Headed League! This was one of Arthur Conan Doyle’s personal favorite stories and has a great adaptation in the 80s Granada series.

one more part to come next week! I’m also working on the second volume (which will collect A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA to THE FINAL PROBLEM) - here’s the cover:

Sherlock Holmes and the Case of Unmistakeable Narrative Parallels:

The next case will be (one of the absolutely classic stories) THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE!

After the conclusion of THE EMPTY HOUSE:

after supper cigars and a preplanned speech (which is entirely canon, I love this speech):

Will No One Think of Mycroft:

direct eye contact:

shoutout to my exvangelical husband for giving me some pointers about the gay parts of the Bible...I have a lot of thoughts around resurrection myths in Christian societies and how the Holmes canon plays with but also subverts that archetype, which I will hopefully be able to explore in a semi coherent fashion in coming stories!

the next story is A CASE OF IDENTITY!

You can preorder it and read a description here!

as for Holmes and Watson…

the physical relief I felt when I got to draw both of these characters smiling again!!!

"I moved my head to look at the cabinet behind me. When I turned again Sherlock Holmes was standing smiling at me across my study table. I rose to my feet, stared at him for some seconds in utter amazement, and then it appears that I must have fainted for the first and the last time in my life. Certainly a grey mist swirled before my eyes, and when it cleared I found my collar-ends undone and the tingling after-taste of brandy upon my lips. Holmes was bending over my chair, his flask in his hand. “My dear Watson,” said the well-remembered voice, “I owe you a thousand apologies."

"I struck against an elderly deformed man, who had been behind me, and I knocked down several books which he was carrying. ... I endeavoured to apologize for the accident, but it was evident that these books which I had so unfortunately maltreated were very precious objects in the eyes of their owner. With a snarl of contempt he turned upon his heel."

It is spring of the year 1894, and Sherlock Holmes has been dead for three years.

You can read The Empty House here if you want to follow along with the canon!

extras:

Don’t accuse me of queerwashing (or do, I don’t care) - it’s canonical that Holmes has an old woman disguise, as referenced in THE MAZARIN STONE.

Watson is dressed in mourning. Men did not wear as elaborate mourning as women in the Victorian era, but the extra wide hatband was one way to convey a deep personal loss. Who that loss is referring to is probably not something that Watson is entirely honest about, even to himself.

There's a theory from Madeleine B. Stern that Holmes's bookseller was a real life person named Alfred B. Clementson, and that he impersonates him in Empty House, so I nabbed that name. I love that there is a Sherlockian theory for absolutely every detail of the canon.

I’ve loved telling the story of the Final Problem and I hope you enjoyed reading it! This short story absolutely destroyed me when I first read it last year, and ever since I have been determined to tell my own version. I’ll be taking a small break from Watson’s Sketchbook due to book tour and the multitudinous horrors of 2025, as well as a new original graphic novel that needs a little attention - but it won’t be long and I (and Sherlock Holmes) will be back with THE EMPTY HOUSE!

this update picks up a little while after the update that began this chapter.

I’ve wanted to redraw the cab scene from A STUDY IN SCARLET for ages so it was nice to return to that. One more update to come in this chapter!

Content warning for this update, which contains spoilers (click here for details)

okay I wanna talk about writing this a little bit!

-In the last lines of the comic, Holmes is recalling this conversation.

-For that drawing of Watson standing looking out at the Falls, I kept thinking of a line from Lord of the Rings. It's when Samwise thinks that Frodo has died. He leaves the body, determined to carry on his mission, but stops for a moment to look back. "He peered out at that high stony place where all his life had fallen in ruin." There may be one or two commonalities between the things I like okay?!??

-Also for that drawing, that canon line "who was to tell us what had happened then?" shook me to my core when I first read this story. I knew I had to work it in somehow. What happens to the narrator when his protagonist dies?

-More canon lines - Moriarty talking about an "engine tearing itself to pieces" and "the days of the great cases have passed" are things that Holmes says himself.

-There's an instinct to drawing comics that makes me love making them more than any other medium. When a character is going to go through something complex, first I make sure that I can draw them experiencing that emotion. If I can't draw it, then there's probably something wrong and I need to write a bit more. Here are some sketches I did as I was ideating (which ended up being used in the comic):

-I was agonizing a few months ago about how to do this story, how to bring Holmes to the brink of the cliff and then bring him back. Sometimes when I'm stuck I just freewrite to see what comes up, trying to step through things from the character's perspective and see what makes sense. Here's some of this that I kinda think slaps:

When he survives…

He didn’t expect it. He was fully prepared to die. And he almost steps over that cliff, he does. Because he’s written himself into the end of the story. He’s written John the perfect ending.

But he doesn’t. Some animal part of his starved and neglected body, the part that kept him from falling in the first place, that kept him fighting. Is it the part that was loved and nurtured by watson? Some lingering love keeps him from following Moriarty. Hands that touched him in tenderness and love, now holding him back.

So everything since then has been trying to portray that in the most effective way possible. thank you for reading!

"It was the sight of that Alpine-stock which turned me cold and sick."

Forgive me for ending in the middle of a conversation - the next part is long!