END OF THE WORLD ?

I was really pleased with how this one turned out. After having *nerves* drawing ROSE , I relaxed here and I think I did a better job. Particularly pleased with Eccleston this time and Boe was a dream to draw in my style.

The Rescue hand coloured

To compliment the previous post here's The Rescue . There's not much to add - it's a fairly lowkey crashed spaceship drama  with alienesque Koquillion the visual centre . I've always liked Vicki and this gave me a chance at a decent profile shot. Sandy the sand monster was requested by the editorial team and who could blame them?

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Time Team 2011

One thing we all wanted was to drop the grittier inking style and return to the more classic TT look for the new series. Not so much a clean slate but a more stylised approach was on my mind. Episode one ROSE presented a few illo choices - Rose being hounded by the Autons at the start , Mickey going Auton mental in the restaurant but in the end only one picture would fit the brief. It's Rose's first heroic scene in the series where she swings down to save the Doctor. Both leads were in it plus the threat.

I knew I wanted Rose to be central in the image , the focus point . I tried a shot of her swinging directly at the viewer but eventually opted for a more side angle - frankly her flares were making things difficult! Once the pencil was approved I inked the picture then imported it into Manga Studio to give the lines extra sharpness. This blackline drawing was then coloured in Photoshop. I planned on coming up with a unique colour scheme using a pinky rose colour - but couldn't make it work. Eventually the colours seen in the episode were the only option - the blue of the Tardis  adding a bit of zing !

Next month THE END OF THE WORLD .... so much to choose from.

ASSISTANTS!

I was recently commissioned to recreate two Time Teams illos ( Romana and Leela) to go with the original Sarah Jane I had available for sale. I was also asked to compose a new artwork to go with the set of Jo Grant! Naturally it had to include giant maggots and I jazzed up her groovy wellies. If I get time I'll try and colour this up 1970's style at some point!

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Time Team 4 -Yeti!

Another image from the Time Team archive. At one point the feature covered two stories an installment which inevitably led to one story not getting illustrated. This was a shame as the period covered quite a few popular Troughton monster stories. Sometimes we snuck a smaller second illo in - this one from the infamous WEB OF FEAR. Later A smaller second artwork became part of the feature under editor Clay Hickman. I'd love at some point to revisit the *missing illos* - perhaps for  a TT book ?!

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Time Team Unearthed3 : Davros

I got to draw Davros again in the Time Team feature but this was the first entry for GENESIS OF THE DALEKS! Having only enough space for one big picture - many stories hardly got much of an illo. Still I liked this but my definite GENESIS pic is still to be drawn! I adopted a Mick McMahon approach to this piece - seemed a fit.:)

Trial of a Time Team

Unusually I chose to present this rough in colour ( usually I stick to b/w wash). The three protagonists seemed fairly well balanced and I was given the go ahead.


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Some artists choose to blow up their roughs and then trace through the design using a lightbox. I've tried this myself - my only bugbear is that it can stifle a drawing before it's properly born. I usually draw by eye from my rough ( sometimes I use a simple grid) - but mostly I like to see where the drawing will go. As long as my basic idea stays intact - I'm happy.





Finally the piece is finished and emailed off for approval. In this case Sith's expression needed work ( he's the ugly green creature). I worked directly in photoshop to do this fix - not particularly difficult. Sometimes stuff like this is picked up at pencil stage , sometimes later. Factor in my *creative* inking and not every job swims through smoothly.

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