Character Portraits for Steampunk Holmes

John Singer Sargent

One of the features of the Steampunk Holmes book will be what I call reference cards. When you see a character's name in the book you need only touch it and up pops a reference card with a portrait of that character. Touch the portrait and it flips over to reveal background information - no spoilers.

I was talking to Daniel Cortes about the art work, and he had some wonderful ideas we are going to try out. For one, Daniel wants to do the portraits on the reference cards in a style similar to one of his favorite artists, John Singer Sargent. I couldn't agree more. Of course Daniel will add a little modern edge to them and he had this great idea of having the portraits animate just a little. So, for example, the portrait of Steampunk Holmes might have smoke rising from his pipe and he might blink now and then - simple but fun things like that.

Daniel is also going to help out with the design and art work for the pages themselves, menu items, borders and so on. I want the look and feel of the entire book to be consistent with his art work in style. I'm really very excited about working with him on this project - his enthusiasm for quality and beauty is well aligned with my own.