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: