A Titan Cover (Part 2): A Clockwork Squirrel

First Scribbles

I mentioned in my last post that I had been contacted by Titan Comics to do a variant cover for one of the Doctor Who lines, and that I had picked Twelve as the Doctor I had wanted to start with. (Because, of course.)

So, after much doodling and scribbling in my sketchbook, trying to brainstorm, I finally settled on an idea.

This was the small thumbnail sketch; very, very rough and only about five inches tall. It might be hard to see in such a scribbly form, but the idea was that the Twelfth Doctor is tuning his guitar with his sonic screwdriver.

Behind him is the double-ringed planet I had put in my very first Capaldi picture (yes, I know, self-referential) and on his amplifier is the clockwork squirrel that Twelve was mentioned as having built and which was seen only once in the show.

"Squirrel" is also an in-joke with a friend of mine (*ahem* Sandra) — and I couldn't resist. (Whenever she came across DW filming locally in Wales, she claimed to just be out "taking pictures of squirrels in the park.")

The idea to tune the guitar came about because I had written some Blake's 7 fan-fiction (yes, you heard right) on the Horizon fan club site, based on some group prompts. "Creation" was about the character Dayna building a harp and fellow crew member Vila stealing a tuning fork for her. While writing it, I found myself looking up tuning forks and discovered that they're electronic now (I'm slow), which made me think it would be sort of like having an actual sonic screwdriver.

Hmmm...

That was the germ of the illustration's idea.

I was grateful to a fellow employee at the bookstore where I worked at the time, for kindly lending me his electric guitar as a prop. I had also ordered the 12th Doctor's blue sonic screwdriver which I also ended up using as a prop for more than one picture. (Plus, it's seriously cool and fun to play with.)

After taking quite a few laptop photos of myself posing with the guitar, I picked one of the more usable ones for reference.

And yes. I pose for my own illustrations all the time, and yes, they're always embarrassing to look at. And no, I don't want to show them to you. (Well, at least, not now. They're very silly.)

Now that I had my reference, I was off and drawing. And there was much erasing, too. 

The next step was the actual full-page working sketch in which I needed to get the anatomy and likeness right, as well: one of the hardest things that needs to be done for any illustration, but it ends up being the bones of the finished picture.

Larger Rough Sketch

Now I had my working sketch done. It still looks pretty rough here, but I save all of the tightening up — the fun part! — for the finished version. The next step, however, was photocopying it to the size I needed it and tracing it on my lightbox, transferring it on to comic illustration board.

I gave much more space to the top of the picture for the eventual logo, etc., and you'd be able to see more of the ringed planet in the background.

Ink and Paint

More progress.

After I'd transferred the drawing, I'd cleaned it up a bit, making further adjustments. I still have a lot of these comic boards left over from working on my comic, Heaven and the DeadCity, and they have a nice vellum surface, better for painting. They also have all the page dimensions I needed already printed on them.

I inked the drawing so I would still be able to see the black lines beneath the eventual paint that I added.

The next step was the first layer of paint, which was done in the usual grey-scale acrylic gouache. Here, I've worked out the shading, all the lights and darks. It's still very loose and rough at this stage, but it will tighten up as I continue to add detail and sharper lines.

The very last stage would be the color highlights, which would be blue for the sonic screwdriver and the Doctor's eyes, and maroon red for his velvet coat.

Adding Some Color...

One of the last steps was adding my accent colors. It's become a thing people recognize about my mostly monochrome artwork.

Here's a detail of a little bit of the red and blue I used over top the grey. After this, I moved on to defining the black lines a little more, as well as white highlights and other outlines.  This helped sharpen up some of the looser edges.

Finally, the end stage was to photograph it and then clean it and up some more in Photoshop, making a few more adjustments. (In other words, get rid of speckles and the inevitable cat hair and human hair that always lands somewhere in the paint where I don't notice it.)

And...done! And submitted.

My 12th Doctor Variant Cover for Titan Comics! (Complete with clockwork squirrel.)

And then the wait began to see it actually in print and inside a comic book shop.