Just a quick journal entry to say how sad I am to hear that David Tennant's stepping down as the Doctor at the end of the four 2009 specials.

I have to admit that the announcement speech had me shed a tear or two, mostly because I can see how much David cares about the show and will miss the role.

I've been a fan of Doctor Who since I could read, and I'm always sad to see a Doctor go, especially one as fantastic as the tenth. It'll have been a four year tenure and will rival Tom Baker for screen time, but I'd have still loved to have seen another year, especially with Steven Moffat writing most of the Doctor's dialogue and deciding the plot lines. Personally, I like it when Moffat's forced to take risks.

The only thing I can say to make things better is we still have five more hour long episodes with the Tenth Doctor, and now Steven Moffat gets a fresh start, casting the new Doctor and deciding the costume and character traits.

Thank you to all the team at BBC Wales, and to Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant for keeping my lifelong fandom alive and well so fantastically these last four years, and here's to many more with the next Doctor, show runner and producer!

The image to the right is a portrait of Rose Tyler outside the Millennium Centre in Cardiff, as seen in the Doctor Who series 1 episode Boom Town.

This is a finished version of the Rose Tyler piece drawn on NaArMaMo 2008 Day 18 which represents the first 6 hours of this piece. You'll notice that I've completely redrawn the hair and scarf, and significantly changed the skin tone since then.

This was drawn on a tablet PC using the airbrush tool only. Total time spent about 16 hours, of which about 2 hours was the original sketch, now removed.

Billie Piper is extremely hard to draw due to having unusual and distinctive facial features. As such I had to literally brute force my sketch to get it to work. Thanks must go to my friends windiain and spacefall who gave extremely useful feedback at several points during both the sketching and airbrushing phases.

This taught me how difficult it is to pick up a piece over a month after drawing it and attempt to finish it, especially as I'd lost the original source image and had to work from two slightly different shots. I think the end result has turned out pretty well considering, although it took me a lot longer than I expected.

[GlArMaCo comment thread]
[500year_diary comment thread]

The image to the right is a chibi or 'super deformed' version of Dalek Thay.

This was drawn at print resolution, the full size image is over 3600px high. I used a tablet PC. The lines were drawn with a fixed opacity, variable width brush and the colour was 'by eye' using the airbrush tool.

This was actually supposed to be a quickie, but after drawing the lines roughly in one hour, it looked so good I spent a further 30 minutes tidying them up. The colouring then took three hours. Total time spent was therefore four and a half hours.

I was really worried about whether I could actually draw something with deformed proportions based on an ordinary source image. Then I realised that I usually do a lot of work to get the proportions right in my art, so I must be naturally inclined to deform everything I draw anyway

The changes I made to the proportions were to increase the size of the 'bumper' up so it overlapped (and removed) an entire row of balls, increasing the length of the 'head' so it overlapped (and removed) the first 'rim', stretching the middle section somewhat, making the balls get larger towards the bottom, and increasing the size of the 'hands' and 'eye'.

Hopefully the end result is suitably cute ...although I wouldn't recommend going in for a hug ;)

Following on from my Doctor Who New Series 1 hour alphabet, this is a second 1 hour alphabet using only characters from the Classic Series.

As before, my time limit was 1 hour. I worked out my alphabet and gathered source images before the hour started. After the hour I moved and resized some of the images to produce a better layout and wrote the description in the bottom right corner. I used a fixed opacity, variable width brush and the eraser tool only.

You'll note that I ran out of time. The last 3 letter were drawn after the time limit (about 15 minutes extra time, of which about half was X). At the half way point I was working on the Macra, but I fell behind further having to draw Omega, Peri and Aztec Queen Barbara -- I am really not very good at drawing people at any speed!

Even though I ran out of time, I'm still really happy with how this turned out. All but a couple of them are recognisable as who they're supposed to be.

Letters are:

Alpha Centauri from the Peladon stories
Bok from The Daemons
A Cyberman from Tenth Planet
A Dalek from the Troughton Era
The reconstituted Eldrad from Hand of Fear
The Fendahl from Image of the Fendahl
Sabalom Glitz from Trial of a Time Lord
Harry Sullivan, the Fourth Doctor's companion
An Ice Warrior
Jagaroth from City of Death
A Kroton
Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart
A Macra from The Macra Terror
The Nimon from Horns of Nimon
Omega from The Three Doctors
Peri Brown, the Fifth and Sixth Doctors' companion
Barbara Wright as the Aztec Queen from The Aztecs
The Raston Warrior Robot from The Five Doctors
A Sea Devil
A Time Lord as seen in The Deadly Assassin
The UNIT logo
A Vervoid from Trial of a Time Lord
A Wirrn from The Ark in Space
...and then I ran out of time...

I spent a further 15 minutes adding:

Xoanon from Face of Evil (Tom Baker's face through a difficult to draw video filter)
The Yeti from The Abominable Snowmen
A Zygon from Terror of the Zygons

I've just created and uploaded 12 more user pictures from my NaArt, which I'll be using for Doctor Who and fan art posts. I was making and uploading icons as I went, but gave up after day 10 as it was just one more thing I didn't have time to do as well as art and submitting the art to 4 places every day. I haven't made icons out of everything because some of them just don't work well cropped to a square (or at 100px size).

I haven't actually drawn anything as yet this weekend, I ended up having something of a lazy day, mostly reading comics (including everything on scotmccloud.com) and listening to podcasts. I did cool six portions of food, one to eat, three for the fridge and two for the freezer, of two different meals though, which was vaguely productive at least :)

naarmamo 2008 is over and I completed the challenge! I successfully made 31 pieces of art, one for each day in August, and all while working a full time job then attending a 4 day convention!

I didn't quite meet my own personal challenge of drawing 26 full colour alphabetical New Series Doctor Who images in the first 26 days, but I coloured the two lines-only pieces on the later days and also drew the Doctor Who logo, a Doctor Who 1 hour alphabet and a winning certificate on the psychic paper.

So without further ado, I present my finished Doctor Who New Series Alphabet, with logo banner and bonus material. I've omitted the lines-only pieces coloured later on and I've used re-touched (during August) versions of The CyberController, Hath Peck, K-9 and the Dalek Emperor. All images should have ALT text and title attributes so you can mouse over them for a description, and all should link to the relevant images in my deviantART gallery:

( A Doctor Who New Series Alphabet... )

Statistics:

Total time spent: 129 hours, not including cropping, uploading, posting and describing the images.

Average time spent drawing per day: 4 hours 10 minutes.

Busiest day: 7 hours 15 minutes on day 27, the colours for the Dalek Emperor.

Quickest day: 1 hour on day 28, the 1 hour alphabet.

PHEW!

[NaArMaMo comments]

For my thirty-first and FINAL piece for this year's (Inter)National Art Making Month, I drew the slightly psychic paper (based on its appearance in Silence in the Library).

The tradition for NaArMaMo is that you create your own winning certificate on the final day, so I chose some suitably Whovian paper to draw my certificate on!

The original sketch (which remains around the paper but was removed from the hand) took 30 minutes, the colouring of the psychic paper took another 30 minutes and the colouring of the hand took an hour and a half. The colourising, rotating, skewing, scaling and positioning of the previously created sketches took 30 minutes. Total time spent 3 hours, not including the sketches drawn earlier in the month.

I did finish this before midnight, it just took 30 minutes to crop, upload and describe it.

I think it's turned out pretty well, and it's also a nice excuse to show off the sketch layers I removed from my airbrush portraits of Professor Yana and Rose :)

Thank you everyone who's encouraged me by commenting on my NaArt throughout the month! I didn't quite meet my own goal of creating 26 coloured pieces in the first 26 days, but I got them by the end of the month and absolutely met NaArMaMo's challenge of creating new art every day in August!

[NaArMaMo comment thread]

Today's NaArt is a coloured version of the Sec Dalek/Human Hybrid lines drawn on day 19. Hybrid Sec was seen in the Doctor Who series 3 episodes Daleks In Manhattan and Evolution of the Daleks.

It was drawn on a tablet PC using a variable width brush for the lines and the airbrush tool for the colouring. The colouring took 4 hours. With the 2.5 hours spent on day 19, this accounts for 6.5 hours work.

I drew this spread out while I was attending a convention, I started at 7pm and finished at 3am. I was a little distracted and very tired during the later parts of this work and repeatedly made the mistake of drawing on the wrong layer, in fact I literally airbrushed on all five of the other layers at one time or an other and in each case by the time I noticed it was too late to correct it. This was a little annoying as I was planning to remove the lines and do this as an airbrush only piece.

That said, I think this has turned out really quite well considering I was too tired to walk properly for at least half of the work...

So there we go, all 26 letters drawn AND coloured by the end of the month, and two other pieces too! All I have to do now is draw my winning certificate tomorrow :)

I can also report, for reference, that Escape Pod is an excellent accompaniment to drawing science fiction fan art and today's colouring job took 6 episodes (53 to 58)! If there was ever any doubt whether the archive CDs were worth the money, this (and all the chores it helps me get through) this settles it!

[NaArMaMo comment thread]

For today's NaArMaMo art, I decided to draw the Doctor Who Logo as a header for a gallery of all this month's art.

This was drawn on a tablet PC using the airbrush tool for the logo and lens flare and a fixed opacity brush for the lettering. Total time spent about 2 hours, more than an hour of which was the lettering.

( Click to view a 640px wide digital painting of the Doctor Who logo )

Predictably when hand lettering something without even using a grid of straight lines for guidance, the lettering looks terrible. However I thought it would be cheating to use a font (and don't have the right one). I also accidentally drew the logo too tall and didn't realise until I'd finished, so the whole thing has been squished, which is more obvious when looking at the lettering.

...it's times like this I wish I was using a slightly more feature rich drawing program that would allow me to scale individual elements on only one axis, if only so I could make the W narrower...

All that said, I'm pretty happy with how the whole thing turned out, especially when I only spent about 40 minutes on the logo and less than 20 on the lens flare.

[NaArMaMo comment thread]

Today was my first day away at a 4 day convention and I wanted to spend the time socialising and recovering from the journey here. As such, I decided to do a quickie tonight and draw all 26 Doctor Who new series alphabet pieces drawn previously, but in only one hour.

This was drawn on a tablet PC using a fixed opacity, variable width brush. Total time spent was 1 hour (plus the text in the bottom right corner). All sketches were drawn between 11:35pm and 12:35am. I got to the end with 6 minutes to spare so I went back and improved a few of the sketches. Then at the very end I realised I'd completely failed to draw anything for V so very hastily added the double shadow to the left of the Werewolf to make up for this oversight (so all 26 items are included in order). I mostly tried to draw the characters in the same poses they were in my full colour airbrush pieces. The text at the bottom right was added outside of the time limit.

I scaled some of the sketches as I went. I also moved around some of the individual sketches to make a more even layout after the time limit had finished.

The 1 hour alphabet is not my idea, lots of other people are doing them too.

I believe the practice of drawing 26 images in 1 hour was started by Apelad.

I recommend drawing your own -- they're excellent practice for drawing simple sketches/characters/cartoons, they're quick and they're lots of fun!

Letters are:

Adipose Baby | Brannigan | CyberController
Davros | Emperor of the Daleks | Face of Boe
Gelth | Hath | Isolus
Judoon | K-9 | Lazarus Monster
Macra | Nestene Conciousness | Ood
Pyrovile | Queen Victoria | Rose Tyler
Sec Hybrid | Toclafane | Untempered Schism
Vashta Nerada (double shadow) | Werewolf | Xylok Crystal | Yana
(Gas Mask) Zombie

(Ironically this has now taken me longer to scale, convert, upload to here, deviantArt and naarmamo, and describe than it did to draw ;)

[NaArMaMo comment thread]

As I've finished all letter of the alphabet now, today I started colouring the two unfinished pieces, starting with the Dalek Emperor drawn on Day 5 (and revised on Day 9). The Dalek Emperor was seen in the Doctor Who series 1 finale Parting Of The Ways.

After 6 hours total on the line art (4 hours on day 5 and 2 more hours on day 9), this colour job took me an additional 7 hours work today, and about 4 hours on day 9 (but I'm not counting this, as it was almost entirely rectifying a technical screw up and not actual creation or art). So total drawing time on this piece is AT LEAST 13 hours!

Even though I drew this at print resolution, I've had to scale this down to 900px width because I just don't have the time to manually fix all the problems with the lines tonight. Essentially at some point on day 5, I changed the image in The Gimp and then reopened it -- this flattened the whole thing so I was drawing on an opaque white background that I couldn't colour under.

As a result of this mistake, I had to spend 4 hours fixing the lines with flood fill and then manually fixing individual pixels and even with all that when I pasted the lines back in at the end, they were full of random light pixels, which is why I've had to scale this so small and even then spent an extra 20 minutes manually drawing over the pixels still visible when scaled (and again, I'm not including that time in my total).

The other side effect of the mistake was that I had to colour over the lines so I couldn't see the guidelines any more. This made things more difficult than usual. I also wasn't able to do a more interesting background than flat black.

All in all, ARGH! But at least it's a reasonably good end result (even though, having seen more source images, it's quite clear that I screwed up the proportions when I slightly changed perspective when drawing the line art on day 5).

I think if I'd drawn the lines today, I'd have been more careful with source images and more picky about getting the proportions right, so that's at least something I've learnt from this experience so far.

I imagine I'll spend some more time re-touching this later on, at the very least so there's a full resolution version available.

Update: I viewed this on a different monitor this morning and the yellow of the sections under the 'head' really jarred. It's clear that I when I finished this yesterday, I forgot to do the following:

- Change the yellow around the head to match the metallic yellow of the balls

- Add shadow to the bottom edges of the grey supports inside the left 'shield'.

So I'll DEFINITELY be coming back to this one, whether it's by the end of the month though, I don't know.

Update 2: Final version with 45 more minutes spent and much higher resolution now available.

[NaArMaMo comment thread]

For the mysterious Z, I drew Doctor Constantine just after transformation into a gas mask Zombie who just wants to know, Are You My Mummy? The Gas Mask Zombies were seen in the Doctor Who series 1 episodes The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances.

This was drawn on a tablet PC using a variable width brush for the lines and the airbrush tool for the colouring. Total time spent was about 5.5 hours, about 2.25 hours of which was the line art layer.

I was planning to also draw a highly contagious New Earth diseased zombie who just want to be touched -- that way I could title this 'Zombies' and definitely start with Z, but the idea of getting to bed before 5am won out in the end.

I could have also drawn Toby Zed from The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit, but the idea of drawing another person on six hours sleep just didn't appeal, especially with all those symbols I'd have to draw in as well...

I think this turned out reasonably well, it looks like the colours are wrong, but they match the source image, I assume it was a publicity photo taken with a flash.

So there we go, all 26 letters drawn! Two left to re-visit and colour over the next two days and then I'm away at BiCon drawing whatever I have time for until the end of the month!

[NaArMaMo comment thread]

For the letter Y's NaArt I drew Professor Yana as seen in the Doctor Who series 3 episode Utopia and portrayed by Derek Jacobi.

This was drawn on a tablet PC using the airbrush tool only. Total time spent about 5 hours, of which about 1.5 hours was the original sketch, now removed.

Yet another airbrush only portrait where I ran out of time and rushed through the finishing, hair and collar. Ideally I would have spent at least an hour or two extra on the face before I even started on the hair and body. Usually I'd spend considerably more time on the eyes, while in this case they were quite a rush job. Obviously I'd have liked to included some shoulders as well...

All that said, I don't think this has turned out too badly and I'll probably come back to this piece later to clean this up and finish it off properly.

[NaArMaMo comment thread]

For the dreaded X, I drew the Xylok Crystal as seen in the Sarah Jane Adventures story The Lost Boy. The crystal is the mind of the computer Mr Smith, which was seen in the Doctor Who series 4 finale The Stolen Earth/Journey's End. This may seem like a bit of a stretch, but there's not an awful lot of things starting with X in New Who...

This was drawn on a tablet PC using the airbrush tool only. Total time spent was about 3 and a half hours, 1 hour of which was the original sketch layer, now removed.

I had planned to do my art today in the early afternoon but my linux server was cracked by an ssh worm and I ended up spending most of the day in a bit of a panic as a result. By the time I'd sorted that out and had dinner, it was time to go out to see a film, already arranged with a friend. I ended up starting this at half past midnight, by which time I was extremely tired.

I finished after 4pm, and I fully realise that this isn't up to my usual standard. I was expecting this to be a quick one, but it turns out that it's really bloody difficult to draw coloured crystal. I ended up banging my head against this for considerably longer than I spent on some much better pieces.

With hindsight, I wish I'd chosen to work from one of the actual darker and less colourful screencaps, rather than this publicity image. Or I should have taken the easy way out and drawn Mr Smith (even though I think that prop isn't very interesting or photogenic from any angle).

I suppose that's the benefit of starting early, if your first idea doesn't work out, you can switch to something else...

Oh well, as always, it's the spirit of NaArMaMo to post everything, even the weaker art.

[NaArMaMo comment thread]

For W's NaArt I drew the Werewolf, as seen in the series 2 episode Tooth And Claw.

This was drawn on a tablet PC using the airbrush tool only. Total time spent was about 5 hours.

This was a bit of an odd one, as I tried a different method of drawing this from my normal airbrush pieces, rather than layering in dark parts then adding lighter highlights, I drew in rough areas of colour and gradually added more detail across the entire piece. The end result was that it was recognisably the Werewolf after an hour, but somehow I ended up tweaking and tweaking this until suddenly I realised it was 4.30am and quickly moved onto the moon.

I think the end result is at least as good as my other pieces, but the problem with this method is that I don't know when to stop, end result: it was 5:15am when I uploaded this...

(Wow, two non-work evenings in a row and I've managed to completely kill my sleep patterns, I'm impressed!).

[NaArMaMo comment thread]

For the letter V, I drew a 'previously occupied' spacesuit controlled by the Vashta Nerada, as seen in the Doctor Who series 4 episode Silence In The Library/Forest Of The Dead.

This was drawn on a tablet PC using a variable width brush for the lines and the airbrush tool for the colouring. Total time spent was about 5 hours, about 1.75 hours of which was the line art layer.

As always with art on Fridays (see Hath and Ood), I've stayed up extra late to finish colouring this (Although I have to admit that I also started colouring extra late too). This is actually the second time I've drawn this spacesuit now (see 'Shall We Do Diaries'), but this time I've chosen a scene with interesting lighting -- red tinted on the left and blue tinted on the right. Always a good idea to choose a source image with an interesting pose, lighting or both!

I'm pleased to realise that, due to the long weekend, I'll be able to spend as much time I like on the next three letters! That means that only Z will fall on a working day...

[NaArMaMo comment thread]

For this day's NaArt I drew the Gallifeyian Untempered Schism as seen in the Doctor Who series 3 finale The Sound Of Drums/Last Of The Time Lords.

This was drawn on a tablet PC using the airbrush tool only. Total time spent was about 3 hours.

I was having really nasty neck and upper back pain all day, by the end of work this had spread all the way down my (non-drawing) arm and was extremely uncomfortable. As a result, I didn't start drawing until gone 9pm because I was waiting for three different types of painkillers to kick in.

As a result of that, I scaled down my plans for this piece. I was going to draw in the view of Gallifrey behind the schism and perhaps the silhouette of the approaching 8-year-old Master. I also rushed through some parts of it using larger brushes than I would have had I started earlier.

All that aside, I think this turned out pretty well considering I was in quite a lot of pain for most of it...

It was fun to get to draw the time vortex as well :)

[NaArMaMo comment thread]

For my art today I depicted the invasion of the Toclafane as seen in the Doctor Who series 3 finale The Sound Of Drums/Last Of The Time Lords.

This was drawn on a tablet PC using the airbrush tool only. Total time spent about 2.5 hours, of which about 1 hour was the three largest Toclafane and another hour was the sky. There was no original sketch.

I worked overtime again today and I was extremely tired this evening. I was having a lot of trouble motivating myself to draw anything as my options were the Time Beetle, the Tenth Doctor (or another Time Lord), the Tardis or the Toclafane.

However I suddenly realised that I didn't actually need to draw the open Toclafane ball and face, I didn't even have to draw the blades -- I could just draw a silver ball! This was suddenly not so intimidating! Once I'd drawn one, I got a little carried away and ended up drawing hundreds of them and a very dramatic background as well!

I'm quite pleased with how this turned out given how little time I spent. I'm also extremely pleased to finish drawing well before midnight!

[NaArMaMo comment thread]

The curse of the Daleks strikes again! All my Dalek-related NaArt goes unfinished due to time!

For today's art I drew the Dalek/Human hybrid Sec, as seen in the series 3 episodes Daleks In Manhattan and Evolution Of The Daleks.

This was drawn on a tablet PC using a fixed opacity, variable width brush. Total time spent was about 2.5 hours.

Today I did 35 minutes overtime, then spent 40 minutes buying a printer, then went out for a meal with a friend. This meant I didn't get started until 8.30pm. Then an hour later another friend came to visit for more than an hour. Due to all this, the 2.5 hours on the lines for this piece left me already after midnight.

I could have stayed up past 2am to finish this, like I did yesterday, but I know I can't go on 6 hours sleep more than one night in a row...

I expected to colour this piece, so there's no texture drawn for the brain and tentacles. As with day five's piece, which was also not coloured due to time, I'm planning to colour this on one of the later days of the month so I end August with 26 coloured pieces of Doctor Who fan art and have produced some art on every day of the month (and apparently several pages of a Doctor Who colouring book! ;)

Now to hopefully get an amazing 7 hours of sleep!

[NaArMaMo comments thread]

For this day's art I developed temporary insanity and decided to throw out all three of my possible Monsters starting with R and instead challenge myself by drawing Rose Tyler, here seen as dressed in the Doctor Who series one episode Boom Town.

This was supposed to be a considerably larger piece, but the face took me so long I literally raced through drawing half the hair, and drew in the scarf as a blurry squiggle, then cropped the whole thing tightly to the face. Even with all that, I still finished at 1:45am!

This was drawn on a tablet PC using the airbrush tool only. Total time spent about 6 hours, of which about 2 hours was the original sketch, now removed.

Billie Piper is extremely hard to draw due to having unusual and distinctive facial features. As such I had to literally brute force my sketch to get it to work. Thanks must go to windiain and spacefall who gave extremely useful feedback at several points during both the sketching and airbrushing phases.

Even though I didn't finish this off to the standard I wanted to, I'm still EXTREMELY pleased with how this has turned out, considering my phobia of drawing people and how I did this on a work night!

[NaArMaMo comment thread]