SH - JW : The game is on

Sherlock Holmes/Benedict Cumberbatch - John Watson/Martin Freeman

I've started this drawing on a collaboration with suis0u on Tumblr, I really like her style and I thought it could be very interesting to work on a mutual project. So we started on a same idea and reference in order to put our final drawings together. You can see her wonderful version here.

I love making this kind of drawing, I mean, start with reference, have some ideas while drawing, and have an unexpected result. Like for example, the right part of Sherlock; I didn’t know what to do here, because I had John’s arm on the over side and nothing on this one. So I’ve started to draw Sherlock’s coat longer and it became this kind of black wing protecting John’s head (perhaps a ‘Smaug’ inspiration somewhere!) As well for sh/jw letters and logos, also to not let too much blank. I had fun with this one, maybe except John’s face because his expression was quite difficult and shading the whole drawing was very long. Thanks to suis0u who had the idea of the playing card, I could do another similar drawing, but with Sherlock and Jim this time.

Drawing on bristol paper, 50x33cm (19,6’x13’)
Tools: mechanical pencil with 4B lead, 4B graphite pencil.

See the whole process on my tumblr post:
sh - jw wip1
sh wip2
sh wip3
jw wip2
jw wip3
sh - jw wip2

Reference