So I finished painting the last four Hastings novels (fighting Peril at End House tooth and nail along the way, using a sample of my “two shots spliced together” technique for Lord Edgware Dies, trying a bit of tiny landscape painting with Dumb Witness, and rounding them all off with a slightly impressionistic The Murder on the Links). Now what?
These little books were pretty time-consuming. Each one took a total of at least five to seven hours, including prep time. I had to watch through the episode, collect a bunch of likely screen shots (for some episodes it was as many as two dozen to choose between), choose one and print it out in large and small sizes to work from, paint the cover on, re-read the book, make a list of representative quotes that might fit onto the back, choose one, and paint it on the back. This project had the potential to be wearying.
Unfortunately, it was also really stupidly fun. And tremendously addictive. I wanted to carry on, but if I kept going, where would it end?
I’d been posting the books on Twitter as I went along. So, at the end of my Hastings novels, this conversation happened:
Well, that was it. It was onward to the bitter end. “Please don’t” stop? I’ve created fan art on WAY less provocation than that.
If Suchet could finish all of Christie’s Poirot novels without whining, so could I. Maybe it wouldn’t even take me 25 years.
Maybe…
(to be continued)
These novels are actually “short stories.” Get it? Short stories? …*sigh*…
Seven Storeys High 
Love ALL the miniature books, but most fond of your work on Curtain. Matter of fact, that’s better than the cover the book has now!
Enjoyed your back and forth with David Suchet ! NOTHING says GOLD fandom than having THE man, himself, as an admirer.
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