A Psychochronography in Blue (Part 3)

If a blue box making a strange Whooorp-ing sound appeared next to you right now, and turned out to be a time machine containing an eccentric alien with a British accent, what would you do?  You wouldn't need to go back in time to read the first two chapters in this exciting adventure because thanks to the wonders of the internet you could just click HERE for Part 1 and HERE for Part 2, allowing you to catch up in mere minutes, freeing you to see the end of the world (risky, but with tree people), the fall of Rome or the birth of your great-great-great grandchild with the Doctor.  When clicking those links do be careful of which wi-fi provider you chose though, you never can be too careful...

So yes, this is the third cover for The TARDIS Eruditorum, and the second by me.  If you've just read the previous two parts you'll note a distinct change in style for this one, and we'll get to why in just a moment.  Clicking the image will bring it up at half the final print resolution - even that is pretty large.  If you wish to order the book you can get details from Philip Sandifer's related site HERE, and I'll update with actual links for purchase later.

Incidentally, I don't know that I ever posted a photo of the actual book resulting from the last one.  Let's take care of that now.  It turned out darker than I was expecting, and the glossy cover reduces the "Old book" effect a little, bit otherwise it's very nice:

So the preamble to the new one isn't as involved as for the last one.  Philip emailed me and basically said "You still interested?" and I basically said "sure," and got to work on some ideas.

The Third Doctor was the first shown in colour, was trapped on Earth (specifically in the UK), worked for the military (more or less), had the largest supporting cast thus far, introduced the Master, was far more action oriented, and was at the dawn of the glam rock sensibility of the 70's (a subject covered heavily in the book); So I tried to aim for something that hit upon at least one or two of these elements in each of the cover roughs.  Some were very successful,  others less so.  My Brother pointed out that the one on the right of the first row is actually far more early 80's than 70's, and took to calling it the "Unexplained Mysteries cover"  as it looks just like the covers to a series of books focusing on UFO sightings, Ghosts and other unexplained phenomena that were around when we were kids (I run a lot of things past my Brother - he's an artist too and I value his insight).

The last cover on the right in the second row is the closest to my original vision of the cover, but as you already know we went with the one next door.

Funny thing is that this one, which is my far the most witty of the designs (with part of the British Isles forming the shadow of the Doctor's coat, shirt and face), was the only one that came about wholly by chance.  I was shuffling elements around for a very different idea, moved Britain out of the way of an element that never made any of the covers and went "Oh...  Yeah, that's cool!"  And just had to shuffle it around and make it negative space to the background rather than a different colour as it originally was.  the happy accident strikes again.

Philip liked the design of that cover, but much preferred the text layout from "The Incredible Shrinking Doctor" cover on the far left, so I set out to combine them, and also to come up with the rear cover for another rough draft.

The first go didn't work that well, though it's still recognizable as the final cover, if from a universe one slot over.  I felt it would be difficult to make out all the text with the original colour scheme and went with something more somber (the text on the back is from the second edition as a placeholder by the way).

Phil, quite rightly, wasn't to keen on the changes.  They still look pretty cool, but it's completely lost the Glam Rock Colour Explosion that drew him to that design in the first place.  Let's try it again...

Several variations of typeface and colour with the same layout.  Eventually it was agreed we'd go for the version in the lower left.  All through this Phil had been very keen on the dot pattern in the Doctor's profile, and at some point I thought I'd try it on the rear cover as well, and I also decided I liked the rounder typeface for Phil's name, even though it didn't fit with any other type elements - Making it distinct to compensate for it's relatively small size.

Around this time Philip asked me to also come up with a logo that he could place on other books, as the TARDIS style emblem from the previous volume wouldn't look so great on a book about Wonder Woman (for example).  A fair point, and so I set to sketching up some ideas.   Phil liked the idea of the EP being part of a scroll, which was the very first idea I'd laid down, and the monogram type thing in the lower right, which was the very last thing I'd done.

As you can see I never managed to make the Monogram work to my satisfaction, so I threw some other things into the mix.  Phil stuck with the scroll, and while I liked it I also had a great liking for one of the others for graphical reasons.  I even tried it on a mock-up of the cover, but eventually Phil decided he really liked the scroll, so we stuck with that for the final.

All the above elements came together for this final rough, here at the actual size I created it (if you enlarge it at least).You'll note that very little has changed between this and the final cover, even though I had to re-author many of the elements in order that they be scalable  up to the final print res.  Naturally tracing the outline of the map took a rather considerable amount of time, especially up in the Scottish parts, but the rest was fairly easy. You may also note that the TARDIS outline on the back has now changed - that's because I was using an outline of the wrong TARDIS - Pertwee's was much boxier than the more recent ones.

The only other difficulty was the dots that Phil had liked so much, and my notion to carry that through to the rear cover.  Since the underlying design is vector based rather than bitmap this was actually quite a task, and took quite a chunk of my computer's memory to handle.  As a result this cover was a lot more intensive than the previous one, and I'm very happy that I'll finally get to upgrade in the next few weeks.  Should make doing the next cover a breeze.

I won't show work in progress shots of the other revisions as mostly it was a case of adding the usual grime and creases and other minor tweaks to the design (the rear text, the spine width, the quote on the back and so on).

As with last time, here's the cover without any of the wear and tear (and using slightly different dimensions as this was from before the spine width was final).  Very colourful, very graphic, very 70's, and hopefully really nailing the Glam Rock sensibility crossed with action-man espionage look that Phil was likely hoping for.

A Musing 5: It's just an Illusion (Part 1)

Let's talk about optical illusions.

Usually when you think of optical illusions you're thinking of something that's messing with your brain; "Look all the dots are wobbling!" "Look, that staircase is impossible!" "Look, the candlestick is two faces!" and so on.  But really we rely on optical illusions all day, every day.  Without them could we look at a photograph and make sense of it? Understand a representational illustration? See a movie, without the illusion of motion?  I'm going to say that no, we probably couldn't, and that such art forms are as reliant on illusions that can fool our brains into seeing something that isn't there as novelty videos of dragons who's heads follow you around the room.  Illusions are central to our understanding of art - they make art possible, and yet at the same time they make art very difficult.  We'll get to the why of that in a later post, but first let's look at some common illusions and why I believe they make a case for art, in general, being dependent on them.

Before we continue I should point out that this essay is going to be a bit of a ramble, and will be split into two parts (the next coming soon).  I have a copy of Sketch Book Pro open in one window, and I'm writing this in the other. I am hoping it will all tie up neatly with a nice bow, but I'm not writing it for my English lecturer so I'm just going  to go with the flow and hope for the best (If you're lucky I'll proof read it before publishing).  As usual in these posts there's the caveat that I'm not an expert in this stuff, and I'm definitely not qualified in these areas, so you probably don't want to quote me in case I'm an idiot :)

What we have above are quick examples of the Kanizsa Triangle and the Phenomena known as Pareidolia - here specifically applied to faces and expressions.  No, I didn't use a ruler, obviously.

The Kanizsa Triangle, also known more broadly as Illusionary Contours, and sometimes specifically as The Pacman Triangle (which is a great description) was first described by Gaetano Kanizsa back in 1955, although people had at least been aware of it for at least a few millennia before that; but if you don't make notes you don't get things named after you I guess - unless you're awesome, like Pacman.  It's fairly easy to ascertain that people were aware of this illusion before 1955 because it's a fundamental aspect of our understanding of art (and of our visual understanding of things in general - It's called Amodal Perception).  Not all art, but rather a lot of it.  It's also a key element of the Rubin's Vase Illusion (Sometimes called the Candlestick and Faces Illusion), which dates from around 1915.  Examples of it can also be seen in woodcuts going back centuries, but I'm far to lazy to go and find any as an example right now.

Pareidolia is considered a psychological phenomena rather than an optical illusion,  but since so many optical illusions are really a result of what out brains do with the information sent to them by the optic nerves I can't help but feel that that's splitting hairs a little.  It does occur with other stimuli as well though; A creak in the house you perceive as a footstep, or an itch that feels like a bug is sitting on you (at least that's how I understand it).  For visual stimuli it's what's responsible for us seeing elephants and horses in the clouds, hungry helicopters, faces in cliffs (naturally that is, Crazy Horse and Mount Rushmore probably don't count, although they likely only really work because of the same phenomenon), or deities in common bread products.

So these are two fairly common illusions, ones we're fairly used to, and ones that we generally put down to either our eyes, or our brains playing tricks on us.  Yet both of them (and many similar optical illusions) are fundamental to our understanding of art and the world.  Lets take a look at a couple of other images.

On the left we have Sherlock Holmes (as depicted by Basil Rathbone -though the likeness is terrible, it wasn't the point of the exercise), while on the right we have a portrait of a woman (based on a photo of Jean Ackerman, though again the likeness wasn't the point - I'm trying not to spend very long on these images, and this failure of likeness will actually feed into a point in the next related post).

And we can see what they are - they are very clearly a profile of a man in a hat with a pipe, and a woman seen from about 3/4 view.  There is no tonal detail here, just black and white shapes that would be nearly meaningless if taken in isolation (more for the picture of Holmes than Ackerman).  The illusions mentioned above working in parallel to fool our eyes into seeing an image that does not actually exist; more so because we don't see the world like this, even when it's dark and we only see in monochrome, this is an entirely artificial construct within our minds.

Here we have three images.  The first is a collection of shapes; the same ones that went into making the image of Sherlock Holmes, but this times moved and rotated into an unrecognizable jumble - although you can probably still make out his pipe.  Despite this being a random rearranging of those previous shapes if you're anything like me you will still find your brain trying to make some kind of sense of the mess.  I can see a man's profile and a stylized animals head - I have to wonder what it is you might find.

The second and third images are just quick tests to see how little information is required for the brain to do its thing.  One of these two men is made up of only two specific dark shapes, the other consists of only one, yet we can tell they are most likely male, roughly what their hair is like, their expression, and can make out certain features explicitly.  If these were based on photographs they might even be recognizable.  Our brains are mad powerful.  I didn't take it any further than this for this post, but before the next one I'll see if it's possible to create a recognizable face with even less (faces tend to be much easier to make out than other things, at least for me).

The last image for today is basically the same image twice, but showing two different things  (I had to open Photoshop for this one, but I needed to crop the other images anyway).  On the left we have another example of Illusionary Contours and  Pareidolia working in tandem to create a relatively complex image from only three main shapes.  On the right the same image is used as an example of how little additional information is required to add the illusion of solidity.  This second also demonstrates another common illusion (although not terribly well).  The squares on the cube look as though they are illuminated from within due to them being so much brighter than the cube itself, especially the one in the darker face, but beyond and despite this the square on the top of the cube; which, you'll note, is not really a square at all, looks fractionally darker than the one facing us.    

So with these in mind, we can extrapolate (because I'm done typing for now) that other optical illusions are also at play with our understanding of art.  Motion pictures use the persistence of vision for example. (I'd put money on a publication or letter dated between 1830 and 1860 having described a zoetrope, then called a daedalum, as some arcane optical illusion (they also called it the Wheel of the Devil, so you can bet they didn't think this phenomenon was exactly common place, while today we consider it perfectly normal.  Amazing what you can find out on Wikipedia).

The reasons for many of these illusions, and the ones I'll cover next time are twofold as I understand it.  Firstly the brain's job is to make sense of what the eyes can see as quickly and accurately as possible.  Given the choice between accuracy and speed, speed is going to win every time.  Better to run away from that cluster of shadows that looked a bit like a tiger than to stay put and get eaten because the brain was still trying to make sense of the stripes against the shadows of the grass.  

The second reason is that all that information needs to be stored, and as amazing as the brain is it's probably not as efficient as most computer memory.  So there's an enormous amount of information needing to be stored in a very small space and not the most efficient method for storing it.  As a result things need to be compressed in the most efficient manner possible, and while most of that occurs during storage (probably between short term memory and long term if I was to guess - if I knew neuroscience I'd likely be better paid), I'm willing to bet that it begins with the decoding of the visual information into information we can understand.  I'll go into my thoughts on that score next time around when I'll discuss how the very illusions that make art possible also make it surprisingly hard to produce.

At the Speed of Walking Pace

Well, it's only four of them, but I have managed to crank out some speedpaints. Highly variable quality, and unlikely to set the world on fire, but worth posting anyway, and some with process images too. My folks have gone off home now, so it's almost business as usual, and other than that I don't have a lot to say that I didn't already cover last time. It does occur to me that I won't be doing the 3rd anniversary post until the end of next month because the blog started in April not March (and the first real post wasn't until May), so thanks for pointing this out in the comments (that's a joke, people almost never comment on this blog; 12,700 views, 58 comments - 12 of which are mine and 15 my brother's. You're a verbose bunch aren't you?). Feel free to comment on my observation of your lack of comments - heh.

Time Taken: 45 Minutes

So, this one is terrible. Really unfortunate. The end.

Okay, so it's based on a shot of a woman that Google informs me is Jessica Jane Clement. I'd had this headshot floating around for ages and finally decided to paint it. The reverse image search that let me know who the photo is of also revealed that the photo is one of a set, and this headshot is just a crop from one. Having discovered that I may have to revisit this and do it properly one day (after I can remove my head from under the blanket of artistic shame anyway).

Time Taken: 50 Minutes

This was supposed to be a portrait of actor Derek Mears, but went off the rails a bit about halfway through. I still like it, it's caught the tone of the photograph even if it hasn't caught the likeness, and in 50 minutes I guess I should be happy with that. I saved some images as I went along on this one (and the two subsequent ones), so you can see that in the third image it almost looks like it might end up looking like who it's supposed to (look him up if you don't know the name) and then abruptly starts to look like a bald Michael Rooker instead. Drat.

You can click on the Process images to enlarge them by the way.  Same with the Speedpaints, although they don't necessarily benefit from it.

Time Taken: 70 minutes

I spent and extra 20 minutes or so for this one just making sure the angles were more or less how they should be before putting down any paint. I think that extra time was probably worth it as I have terrible trouble with extreme perspective. Is that down to optical illusions or just stupidity? No idea, but I do keep meaning to write a post about optical illusions and just haven't as yet. I've mentioned it now, so it's more likely to happen (it'll be even more likely if you post comments asking me to do it, seriously).

Anyhoo, this is based on a photo of Izabel Goulart by Eduardo Rezende for Elle Brazil (not sure of when), and it's another crop - though this time I cropped it myself rather than finding it that way to begin with.

Time Taken: 50 Minutes

Last one, and for a change this is based on a photograph I took myself on a trip to Chanute Air Museum. It's actually way off in terms of perspective and proportion because I rushed the sketching part of the process and just eyeballed it (unlike the previous one where I took my time and measured things with my Stylus), but it still turned out looking half decent if you don't compare it directly with the photograph (You'll note I'm not posting that. I might reconsider - comments again, marvelous things...).

There will likely be more things based photos from that trip in the future, and in all likelihood we may try to make more such trips this year now my son is of an age where he can appreciate them. Fingers crossed.

Until the next time.

Sketching for February '13

Yes, it's been a little while, and I'll be honest, this post probably wasn't worth the wait. Various things either prevented me from sketching, or just made me not feel like doing so much last month. This is not to say that I didn't, or that I sketched a lot of junk (well, yeah, a bit), just that I didn't get as much done as usual, and certainly not as much as in January (about the same amount as December, maybe slightly more). I also didn't really focus on anything, and discovered that the focus I did on arms a few months back was probably a waste of time because I've forgotten how the darn muscles go in the forearm, again (why do I have so much difficulty remembering this - I need to come up with a mnemonic or something. Seriously.

Outside of sketching I've been working on another book cover (It's actually pretty much done now), I recieved my copy of the Doctor Who Anniversary Special that I did a spread for, and it turned out looking far better than I was expecting at such a large size. The book has some wonderful work in it, both written and drawn. I was plesantly impressed :). In other news, I have family in town, so this month is going fairly slowly too. I'm really going to work on improving things somewhat once they leave as I've clearly been slacking since about November, and there's really no excuse for it. OK, on to the sketches...

An interesting aspect for February is that I've compiled almost everything I drew. The only stuff I left out were things that didn't scan well, or that I was interrupted while drawing and never got back to. There's not a "Sketch fail" section as there usually is as the quality band in which the work mostly fell was pretty close. There are failures, and I'll point them out, but nothing so bad as to get an image to itself. As with the previous couple of months there's nothing drawn directly from a reference - this is something I really need to work on.

For the free sketching the guy in the lower Right (with the white highlights) is a bit of a failure. there's something really off about his face, but I'm not sure what. Maybe the perspective is off, maybe the lighting. Whatever it is it's all a little wonky. Yes, that's Solid Snake in the middle (or maybe Big Boss), it's not a terribly exciting rendition, but at least it's probably recognisable. The success of the month is the woman in the bottom centre. I really like that sketch, it just came together quite nicely.

After the fairly successful torso sketches from last month most of these are pretty disappointing. Also, see what I mean about the forearms? Yuck. Still, progress of a sort is being made - I should be able to draw a half decent figure without reference in about 8 years or so. More anatomy studies will be happening throughout this year though, so by the Blog's 4th birthday I hope to be able to more consistently draw things such as hands and feet (right now it's random as to whether I can draw them successfully, or even bother trying).

After the failure with the guy I commented on in the first image I decided to concentrate on some facial features. it wasn't a focus or anything, I just did a few sketches one morning. I think I pretty much understand the basics here, but I have some difficulty drawing eyes on the far side of the head when I have no reference, or eyes from more extreme angles. Something to work on. I'm really happy with the mouths though. Oh, and I didn't lie about reference - that ribcage was drawn from memory. I think it's a little off; I'm only seeing 18 ribs and there are supposed to be 24. Also, the angles are off somewhat. Darn.

And that's it. Really, not much stuff at all. I am planing to have a couple of extra posts before the end of the month, but one of them may fall at the beginning of April. Time will tell if I succeed.

January '13 and (December '12) Sketching

They say it never rains but it pours. I don't know who 'they' are, but they've been saying it for an awfully long time. Right now, with the rain streaming down the windows this seems a particularly apt term, as I do seem to have rather a lot to be getting on with after a month of relative artistic calm. Much of this comes from work, and so you may never see it dealt with here (though it's not out of the question eventually), but some of it I'll be dealing with here eventually. Eventually is an important word there, as I won't have much time to update the blog or do side work to show for a little while, so if this is the only post during February I hope you'll forgive me. But you're not here to hear me bemoan my work load, you're here to see art (come to the wrong place I suspect), so lets get on with it.

I did rather a lot of sketching in January. This may be the first time I've ever had to leave out "good" stuff because there was actually quite a bit of it. Usual fare here, although I really like the girl on the right, she turned out rather well. Here hair is actually based on hair I saw in a photograph, but I don't consider it from reference as I did the sketch sometime after seeing the photo, so I didn't refer to it directly.

The second set of Free sketching is more experimental than the first I guess. Quite happy with the Elfish girl with short hair, and the more cartoonish fellow to her upper right. The chap with the extra large nose didn't turn out as well as I'd have liked, but it's fine enough I guess. But anyway, this is more a sheet of characters than I might usually do.

The final free sketching of the month (and yes, mostly portraits this time), and I have to say I'm really pleased with these ones. I especially like baldy at the bottom there - the scan doesn't really do the shading on him justice because he really came out rather well (in my opinion).

I realised I'd been slacking off learning anatomy and such, and so during January I made an extra effort in that regard. This sheet is mostly my trying to visualize high level shapes and forms and how they fit together. I've done nothing really from a direct reference over the past 2 months, so this was a nice way to find my weaknesses so I can focus some reference drawing time on them this month (if I get any time anyway). Twisting and bending (and combinations thereof) seem to be especially weak, so that's a place to start when I next approach this sort of thing.

More of the same, but this one also features the focus I gave to the muscles of the upper torso. I still need to do some work on these, but I'm also going to move on and work on the musculature around the hips and upper legs soon. After that the back, the legs, arms (again) and so on. That lightcycle is based on a toy I own - technically that's from reference, but I didn't see the point of having a From Reference sheet with only one thing on it, and also the angle it's shown here was not the one I was looking at - it was an exercise in extrapolation.

And lastly, as always, the sketching disasters. Some of these don't look as bad as I remember them looking, but really it's a great sheet to look at in order to think "must do better". Top Right and Middle left were an attempt to try something a little more Picasso like. That didn't go so well.

And that's it. If I don't get time to post again this month I'll see you in March some time(really, circumstances beyond my control and all that - not that I'm really complaining). Next month is also the Blog's 3rd anniversary, so I'll try and put something together for that. Not like a cake or anything, but maybe a progress so far type affair.

A Welcome Return to Speed

It's been a crazy few weeks. I didn't mention this in my last couple of posts, but the company I work for filed for bankruptcy and put most of it's assets up for sale. I won't go into the details (You can look up THQ bankruptcy if you have an interest), but suffice to say it was a stressful time all round, and while I still have a job (under a different parent company, but still with the same team in the same place), many people didn't, and that makes me very unhappy.
And given all that stress art has not been at the forefront of my mind. Even so I've sketched more this month than at any time since September, and given how little I'd drawn in December I felt I may as well hold onto that for a post in early February.  Which leaves us with the few speedpaints I've managed to cobble together over the last two months.  My last speedpaint prior to this was also in September, and I have no interest in leaving it that long again as the quality level drops sharply if I don't do them for too long.

Time Taken: 35 Minutes
I've held off posting this for a while as I was trying to get the original photographers permission, but have had no response (my guess is they're busy).  So after some debating I've decided it doesn't look so much like the original photograph as to result in issues of copyright, and I'm just going to show it anyway.  It's based on one of hepiefull's wonderful wildlife photographs; you can find the original here.   The only really interesting thing about this image beyond that was that I did it in SketchBook Pro rather than Artrage.  I should do that more often - it prevents me from falling back on comfort methods while painting.

Time Taken: 40 Minutes
A few of my friends say this is one of their favourite speedpaints from me, but it really doesn't work much for me.  It's based on a photo from stockness, and looks pretty much nothing like her, and didn't achieve what I was aiming for in the first place (which was not a likeness but a fabric and pose study).  I like stockness apparently; I've drawn her before back in December 2011.  I suspect at some point I'll have to do a painting that specifically sets out to do her some kind of justice, rather than just mangling the poor girls features.  Oh, and this one is done in Photoshop, which I should really use more often.

Time Taken: 65 Minutes
I have no idea why this one took so long, and even less idea of how I mangled it as much as I did (The perspective on his face is all ganked up, much like the Riddick picture from the last speedpaint post).  Still, its got a colour pallete I can get behind, so that's something.  It's based on a photo from malenudereference at DeviantArt, but they seem to have closed their account so I can't link you to the original.  We're back to Artrage for this one, and for the rest.

Time Taken: 60 Minutes
It's a caricature of Neil Gaiman, and not a terribly good one.  He looks almost as much like Serverus Snape as he does Neil Gaiman.  Gaiman has an interesting face though, so I'm fairly sure I'll be revisiting his visage sooner or later. In the unlikely even he ever sees this blog: sorry Neil.  For all that though I like the more purple/red colour scheme of this one, and how it almost looks as though it actually is painted on canvas.

Time Taken: 50 Minutes
I've had the picture this is based on saved to my hard drive for at least 10 years, and probably more.  I have long since forgotten why I saved it, or where it came from, and by today's standards it would probably be considered barely more than a thumbnail (it's 640x480).  I stumbled across it a few days ago and said "Ohh, that'll be good practice" and decided to speedpaint it.  Mostly I did it as practice for perspective, which I think we've already established I'm terrible at, but I also liked the less standard use of orange and blue in a picture (you see that combination all the time in film posters and stuff, but not generally like this).  The result still has some issues with the perspective, but it's a lot better than that Porsche I was trying to paint a while back.

And that's your lot.  I'm making a promise to myself to get back into the one-speedpaint-a-week mode ASAP (and by ASAP I mean as of now), and also to post some more video game things over the next few months - I've already covered RFA, but there's still SR, SR3, RFG and Punisher to cover.  That's assuming anyone wants to see things from those (Well, I'll do them anyway, you don't have to read them, right?).

Next post will probably be the bumper sketch post from December and this month - Next weekend with any luck.

After the Radio Times

I thought I'd already written this post. That's a weird way to start a post you have clearly yet to write, but I'm guessing it was a weird dream that led me to believe that it was the case. That or I'm a time traveler, which is a nice segway because this is another Doctor Who image. I thought it would be a fun and interesting thing to paint, thought it might be a little challenging, but it wasn't - it was very little fun and incredibly difficult to do. But we'll get there soon enough, or perhaps we already did...

So, shortly after showing the cover for TARDIS Eruditorum I was contacted by Wonderful Books, which produced a Doctor Who fanzine last year and is planning on repeating the idea this year.  Would I do a fan piece for the new publication?  Sure, why not?  So  they ask if I can do a piece based on the 1972 Radio Times Magazine Doctor Who special, but with the three modern Doctors, and that seemed pretty cool.  I sort of wanted to do a piece based on the front cover, but they want the interior two page spread (the photo is similar to, but not identical, to the one in the previous link).  Seems fine, I can do that.

The more I think about it though the more it appears I've bitten off more than I can chew. The spread needs to be A3 size, at print resolution; which is huge.  I need to upgrade my PC soon because there's no way my PC is going to be able to handle that all in one go, and I know a modern one could.  As it is I decide to paint the three doctors separately and then composite them into the same image at the end.  Not ideal, but doable.

The second problem is that there is a scarcity of photos of the new doctors with anything approaching the sort of lighting seen in the original.  I find a reasonable one of David Tennant lit similarly, but taken from a completely different angle.  I find another of Christopher Eccleston that has ideal lighting, but is taken from the wrong angle, and is all of 200 pixels high.  I can't find anything of Matt Smith lit this way.  Clearly I'm going to need to completely relight pictures of them from angles closer to those of the original 3 doctors poses.  This is not a small job.  I decide to start with Matt Smith, as he's going to be the most difficult given my lack of suitable lighting reference.

You may note that while the stance is the same this is not the same picture of Matt Smith that appears above.  You may also note that it's awful.  I'll address this in a moment.  So I had found a picture of smith standing just as I wanted him, but looking in entirely the wrong direction.  I found another image where he was looking int he right direction but standing differently.  I drew from both images to create my lineart, freehanding it, but taking some time over it rather than doing a quick sketch.  I then tried to relight what I had and paint Smith's face. for whatever reason this did not go well.  At one point I sent it to my wife for her opinion and she said "I Love You, but I think he looks like a 55 year old diabetic Matt Smith."  I fiddled about with it some more be eventually realised that she was right (except by this time it was looking more like 55 year old diabetic Matt Smith after a facelift), and gave him up as a bad job to be revisited later.  I left it for a few days in disgust before moving on to Chris Eccleston, which went much more smoothly.

This time I used a grid to help with his face - figuring that maybe part of the issue with the first attempt was down to me failing badly to capture Matt Smith's likeness in the line art (The jacket was sketched freehand again).  Unlike Matt Smith I did have some lighting reference, however poor, for Mr. Eccleston, so this one went much more easily.  In fact of the three Doctors I'm most pleased with how he turned out, and it went very smoothly indeed.  I didn't have any lighting reference for his jacket, so that was done blind, and I have to say it's the thing I'm most proud of in the piece as it came out looking pretty good.  Not much else to say, on to Tennant.

David Tennant went almost as smoothly as Ecclestone right up until I had to paint his suit.  His face isn't right though, as I couldn't quite capture the "vertical eyebrow raise" that he's quite well known for doing.  This may be because I was free handing it again, but whatever the reason he's recognisable even if he's not 100% accurate   When I got to the suit I had a heck of a time relighting it, but eventually found a reference where the lighting on his suit was pretty much exactly what I needed, and his pose was basically the same, so I lucked out there and just copied it; sadly the lighting in that shot didn't make it to his face.  I didn't spend much time on the lower left of his picture as I knew that was going to be obscured by the 9th Doctor, and I left out the shadow from that as I knew it would be much simpler to add it later.

Back to Matt Smith, and I finally found another suitable head pose for reference (still no lighting sadly).  The only problem was that it was backwards, so the floppy bit of his hair was behind his head instead of in front.  I flipped the image around, and  since I was fed up with drawing doctors at this point I scrapped the original painting all together and just traced the basic landmarks of his face onto the old body before adding in the details and corrected hair freehand.  I felt mildly guilty about this, but consoled myself with the fact that I was going to relight this portrait blind and that was more than complicated enough to justify a bit of laziness.  As you can see, this time the painting went a lot better and I could finally move on to his suit, which turned out to be the most difficult single thing I've ever done.

I could just not get this right, and no matter how much I tweaked and revised it it still looked sloppy.  I was quite please with the shadow falling across his shirt as it adds a little depth and believeability to the lighting, but other than that I'm not terrible happy with it.  I was going to add a herringbone pattern or tweed to the coat, but in the end I just got fed up and decided to leave it plain (which is something he has also worn in the series).

To the right you can see the progression of Matt Smith's eyes at actual size, if you were interested (like all the images in this post you can click to enlarge).  Mostly this is just to give an idea of the size of the picture rather than anything else.  It does give a reasonable view into how I was lighting it though, starting in fairly block surfaces and then gradually honing in on where the light would be falling across the surfaces of his face and where the shadows would fall.  The highlight on his left eye was adjusted until it felt right without overwhelming the rest of the lighting on that side of his face.  I don't know it the lighting is actually correct, but it's close enough if you don't break it down too much.

It's also worth noting at this point that in order to keep the Doctors thematically tied I used a similar colour pallet for all three (the exception being Tennant's coat in order that he stand out a little more given that he's at the back).  Ecclestone's jacket, Tennant's suit and Smith's coat all have a greenish hue (most noticeable in Ecclestone's leather), and each of them has a purple accent (T-Shirt, tie and suspenders, with the red of Smith's tie also leaning toward purple).  This latter may just be because I have Saint's Row on the brain because I later realised it was very similar to Saint's purple, though that wasn't my initial intention.

The background was painted separately and in a deliberately rough style to match the painted drop cloth of the original 1972 photograph.  I didn't go for a perfect replica, but it's in the same ballpark.  The purple used in the three doctors clothes again is hinted at here.  Finally I brought it into photoshop and airbrushed the lighting on, including some ripples in the drop cloth for the final composition (they're not show in this image as they were on a separate layer and I forgot to turn it on before saving this jpeg).  The last step was bringing the Doctors in one at a time and placing them in the image with enough space for text to be placed above Ecclestone's head and a good border for printing alignment purposes.

This was all supposed to have been done by the end of November, but in the end it was finished the first week of December (I think), which worked out okay since the fanzine was delayed to this month.  It should be out any time now - when it is released you'll be able to find it at Wonderful Books.   I'm looking forward to it myself; if nothing else I want to see what all the other artists produced, and what the various authors came up with.

Finally,here's a series scaled and modified to fit my desktop, in the unlikely event that you want them for your wallpaper: