sketchbook: this may sh(erl)ock you

I’m in between projects/waiting on a few things, and I know that technically one is supposed ‘relax’ and ‘enjoy life’ at times like this, but if I don’t have fictional characters running around in my head then I don’t feel like myself! It doesn’t matter if they’re my characters or someone else’s. So I’ve been rereading the Sherlock Holmes stories in chronological order (dating WHEN the stories occurred is a whole area of study with lots of disputation because Watson/Arthur Conan Doyle were not good with dates, I’m going off the Baring-Gould timeline) and doing little doodles of my favorite lines.

These are from Watson and Holmes’s first meeting, in the novel A STUDY IN SCARLET. It was fun trying to figure out younger versions of them - Watson is ‘thin’ and ‘haggard’ because he’s just gotten back from the war, Holmes is young and undersocialized and has bandages all over his hands because keeps taking his own blood for an experiment but ALSO works with poisons.

the haircutting is my own headcanon but I think it fits. lowkey obsessed with Bad Hair Holmes

they see a horrifying corpse and mysterious murder scene, which threatens to plunge Watson into PTSD induced anxiety, except that Holmes sings Chopin in the cab home and it’s so weird he forgets about the corpse

this is the first story and they’re kind of out of character - Holmes is very chatty and has a normal sleep schedule, Watson is bitchy and intellectual - but I choose to interpret it as them trying to impress one other

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And here are some doodles from THE SPECKLED BAND, which was Arthur Conan Doyle’s favorite short story. If you’re looking for a good place to start I recommend it! Obviously these drawings contain spoilers.