Thirteen Faces the Storm and Grins

The night before the 13th Doctor's identity was announced, there was a strong monsoon storm in my part of the world, with thunder, lightning and violent winds that knocked trees over. “Ah, this must mean there's going to be a woman Doctor,” I had joked online. I was delighted to have been correct. But the storm seemed to be a harbinger of things to come. Not only was the reaction to her ceiling-smashing incarnation ridiculously tumultuous—but the world itself was going to be facing major challenges in the next few years of her tenure as Doctor.  

I absolutely loved the Thirteenth Doctor. I was in her camp from day one and I knew she would be amazing.

Jodie Whittaker was revealed as the new Doctor, in a clip of her walking through a forest toward the TARDIS. When she lifted the hood of her coat, it was almost magical, like a moment from a fairy tale. I may not be a little girl anymore (at least not in the temporal sense), but I felt that overwhelming joy that girls around the world must have felt then. It felt sensible and earth-shaking at the same time to have the Doctor finally be a woman.

(above left) This was my first interpretation of her, in the forest, having found the TARDIS. I'd put a pocket watch in all of my Doctor pictures and getting 13 on it in Roman numerals was going to tricky. I decided to start with 12 at the top and put 13 in the number one position. That way, I also had room for the next eleven Doctors as well. 

Of course, there are still those out there who would never accept the Doctor's newest transition—and I didn't care. I thought she was great. 

Jodie Whittaker has had one of the toughest Doctor tenures in the nearly 60-year history of Doctor Who. Not only is she the first woman to be cast as the famous shapeshifting alien Time Lord, but world events would shadow her time in the TARDIS with existential fear and uncertainty.

With her warm, breathless enthusiasm, she was the perfect incarnation to see us all through this. 

The global pandemic contributed to a rocky production schedule, new safety guidelines and therefore decreased episodes. Yet, the Thirteenth Doctor remained unflappable, reassuring, optimistic. It was Jodie Whittaker’s short video “5 Things the Doctor Does in Any Worrying Situation” that epitomized why she was so perfect in the role.

With her rainbow striped shirt, her oversized coat, her wide-eyed enthusiasm for adventure and her love and support for her TARDIS team—her “fam”— the 13th Doctor never failed to be a joy. Some of her fam moved on (Graham and Ryan), but one moved even closer to her. (Yaz.)

Thirteen soon became my comfort Doctor. When there were no new episodes with her, I sought out other media. Books and comics. I even bought and read books specifically targeted for very young readers. She and her fam were fun, funny, energetic and enthusiastic and their adventures were just what I needed when I was stuck indoors.

(above) An illustration I finished for the Doctor Who Appreciation Society for the cover of Cosmic Masque.

(right) Yaz and the Doctor, one of many sketchbook drawings I did, inspired by the 13th Doctor's episodes that I would like to go back and finish. 

On her travels, we got to meet such famous historical figures as Ada Lovelace and Rosa Parks and Nikola Tesla. We met a diabolical new Master played by the brilliant Sacha Dhawan. We learned a deep, well-hidden Time Lord secret in "The Timeless Children". We also met Jo Martin's amazing “Fugitive” Doctor—whom we need so much more of because she nailed the essence of the Doctor so quickly and completely in her brief appearances.

(left) I loved the episode, "Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror", as I've always having been fascinated with the scientist.

The 13th Doctor was also an inventor (she fashioned her sonic screwdriver out of Sheffield spoons), and I wanted an excuse to draw her with her goggles. Very steampunk. Another sketch to do a finished version of.

Most importantly, we discovered that the Doctor seemed endless. Her history was diverse and inclusive, and anyone could be an aspect of her future and her past. There was room for all of us.

(right) One of the many pictures I drew with the newly discovered "Fugitive" Doctor from a pre-Hartnell incarnation. Just how far back did the Doctor go? I was thrilled to have the once-mysterious "Morbius" Doctors from the Fourth Doctor's era, to now be canon.

I'm writing this post the day before Jodie Whittaker's last Doctor Who adventure. I will miss her and her resilience in the face of opposition, as well as her big grin in the face of the oncoming storm. I'll miss her sense of wonder when making discoveries. I will remember the comfort her Doctor gave me in some personally difficult times. She follows in the booted footsteps of my beloved 12th Doctor, living up to her predecessor’s regeneration advice:

 “Run fast, laugh hard, be kind.”

And now her time has come to shift into her next form.
Despite the heartbreak of saying goodbye, I welcome the excitement and wonder of yet another regeneration and getting to meet our next Doctor, who will be played by Ncuti Gatwa.

I can’t wait to start another adventure.

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.

A Titan Comics Cover (Part 1): Keeping It Cosmic

Have you ever just fooled around with some of your artwork, just for fun, and accidentally gotten a professional job out of it?

This happened to me a few years ago.

Because I hadn't been updating The Watcher Tree as much as I would have liked to in the past few years, I never did get around to writing about some of my recent milestones here. (I did, however, keep everyone updated on my Patreon as it was occurring.) This was one of them and was extremely exciting to me at the time.

All of the fooling around that I mentioned pretty much started back on October 1, 2013 and I blame Peter Capaldi for it. He had just been announced as the next incarnation of Doctor Who and I was part of a group of people who had sent him a welcoming present of fan art that Christmas.

At the time, we had no idea what his costume might look like, so this was my imagined take on it. I wasn't too far off— I was going for an "older Bowie" look. And I'd always liked his hair, well... bigger. I thought that made him look less like his other famous role of Malcolm Tucker. His hair would eventually achieve proper floof status, which made me very happy.

I found myself in previously uncharted realms. I was new to showing people my fan art. Drawing Doctor Who would lead to my being able to practice new techniques and show my art more publicly online. It led to my making a lot of new friends as well.

A few months later, Peter himself sent thank you messages to all who participated in the fan art presents. He loves fan art, being an artist himself, and he even drew us little planets and Daleks on signed postcards. (I have mine framed and hanging on the wall.) He wrote to me: "Keep it cosmic!" (I wrote a squee-ing Watcher Tree blog post about it almost a decade ago.) Coincidentally, when I finally got to meet him five years later, he also told me to "keep it cosmic". (I'll definitely write about that meeting in a future blog post.)

Well, this first foray into Doctor Who fan art led to a long project. I began to draw portraits of each of the Doctors in my sketchbook, accompanied this time by little fob-watches in the corners counting down their numbering, where I could also conveniently put my signature. (I also chronicled the progress of these illustrations in earlier posts on this blog.) 

I hadn't planned at the time to do finished versions of the sketches at all. Sadly, my dad died, quite suddenly. I was still in shock over it, and I found myself at home from work for a few weeks and needing something else to occupy my mind, to make me feel less helpless. I turned to my drawing table, just to give me something to do. I ended up barely leaving it. 

As it turned out, it was the distraction that I desperately needed.

I pulled out my gouache paints and started with a finished version of my Tenth Doctor drawing. He was my friend Sandra Franklin's favorite, and she would be flying in to visit from England the following week and I wanted to try and get it done for her to see.

I finished Ten in two days, a record time for me. (The other 14 pictures to follow weren't done in such a similarly sad fervor.)

After this, I thought, well, there's all the other Doctors to do, too. Keep going. Make it your new assignment.

So, I did.

(left) This is the sign I made to greet my friend Sandra at the airport. It was done the previous night in children's markers on poster board. It got a few laughs from the other passengers arriving from Las Vegas, too.

(Photo by Sandra Franklin.) 

Doctor Who Blank Sketch Covers

Titan Comics put out special blank sketch covers of their DW titles, so I decided to have a go playing with them. I took some of my own Doctor illustrations and made little mock-up covers, using the sketch cover as a template.  

This also helped me practice using Photoshop, which I still admit to being a novice with. I had to make modifications to the original art to make it fit around the logo; this took more time than I had intended. However, once I started fooling around with them, I lost track of the hours I was hunched over my laptop, but I remember having a blast pretending these were real. 

The resolution of the type in this first experiment (right) is too small, but I just wanted to see what my Ten might look like as a cover. As with the others I played with, I had to add more sky over his head and remove the clock in the corner.

(Here's an old post which explains the clock in each of my Doctor pictures. In the case of David Tennant, he's ten o'clock, of course.) I also added the little photo of the actor to the upper corner.

I then moved on to the Third and Fourth Doctors, repeating the process in order to make the logo fit. These ones turned out much better, I think. I didn't have a template for the Third Doctor, so I just had him "guest-star" in the Twelfth Doctor's comic. (I added my own small Twelve up in the corner.) Four had his own line, so it wasn't a problem there. 

Proud of my fun, I shared my fake covers on Twitter, and people seemed to like them. 

There was a misunderstanding in which someone thought I actually had done a variant cover for Titan, and I had to explain that no, these were not real, that I was just playing around with my own artwork. Coincidentally, at the time, there was a limited comics series featuring the Third Doctor written by Paul Cornell, with art by Chris Jones, and both of these creators saw my fake covers on Twitter as well. (Superb story, by the way. I bought all of the issues, and the collected volume can be found here.)

Then, to my utter surprise, Andrew James, who was then editor of the Titan Doctor Who line, contacted me and asked if I wanted to do a variant cover for real this time. 

                                                                           !!!!

I think you know how I responded. 

He asked, "Which Doctor would you like to start with...?"

It was pretty obvious which one I would choose: it was the one who had started all of this "fooling around" for me in the first place, and had been the subject of my first ever fan art. (And yes, it had taken me this long into adulthood to actively make fan art.) 

I was both ecstatic and terrified at the same time. The result would become my first ever professional comic book cover.

And so, I began trying to come up with an idea for a possible Twelfth Doctor cover. 

                              

                                            To be continued ...