1) The Detective, 2) The Hound, and 3) The Cast
Bret Herholz is an illustrator, scriptwriter and art instructor in Massachusetts. He's written and drawn a number of different books including "Diary of the Black Widow", his latest "Memento Mori" written by his wife Sydney, and my favourite "Sherlock
Holmes: The Painful Predicament of Alice Faulkner" (adapted from William Gillette's play). He's also been a contributing artist for the web series "Cracked: After Hours".
I actually came across Bret's work on eBay a few years ago. His Edward Gorey-esq style really caught my eye. While I lost out on the first auction, I did manage to win this great rendition of the classic Sherlock along with a copy of his book. We emailed back and forth a little and I commissioned him for the second and third pieces above. "The Hound" is based on a Sydney Paget illustration and Bret did a simply amazing job. The eerie-ness of the piece is wonderful and I love the red eyes on the hound. For "The Cast" piece, I was interested in getting something with not just Holmes and Watson, but with a couple of the other characters like Prof. Moriarty and Irene Adler. Bret ended up doing this family portrait style piece featuring many of the major characters from the stories. I was stunned when I saw the final piece. He went above and beyond on this one especially with some of the smaller details like needles on the end table, the picture on the wall, etc...
On a side note, Bret does some amazing pieces with other literary characters like Alice (in Wonderland), Winnie the Pooh, etc... But aside from his Sherlock pieces, his Doctor Who ones are my favourites. I highly recommend looking him up.
