Tag: picspiration

Author’s note on researching “a price most dear…” and the wonderful peeps at MI6Cafe

(I’m looking at you @10kiaoi )

I started researching in April.  (Why, you may ask, am I still writing the last chapter if I knew the deadline and started so early?  I have no good answer.) Anyhoo, I had about 20 tabs open (as one does) and was looking at images for inspiration (as one does), when I stumbled upon an Elizabethan portrait that looked surprisingly like Q (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Hilliard):

I shared it with my @mi6-cafe peeps at slack, extolling my luck at finding a historic portrait that has a passing resemblance to the character, when @10kiaoi just grabs it and — in like 4 seconds or something completely ridiculous — sends back this:

Which, obviously, I was over the moon about ( @10kiaoi is so talented it’s crazy).  It’s coming through on tumblr little large for the resolution, so please ignore that and note the floppy fringe!  the eye shape!  the mole!  So perfect.

So, I used the altered version in two manips that will get used in the fic:

The chapters that include these will be going up today but I wanted to make sure I gave props to both Nicholas Hillard and @10kiaoi for both the fic inspiration and the lovely art to include for the readers.  Cheers!

ato-the-bean:

Q through the ages… picspiration.

Adding this 1886 Impressionist painting from Spain that’s making the tumblr rounds along with a headcanon:  Q didn’t even know the artist, Joaquín Sorolla, had seen him in profile during that trip.  But he remembers that shirt and that garden.  He buys a reproduction in the museum store, surprised that either the artist or museum had misgendered him.   Italian Girl with Flowers indeed: wrong on two counts!