Blimey!
The Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond mistakenly arrive in a location other than the one they intended. By the looks of things they expected to land within cold surroundings, but instead The Doctor and his feisty companion find themselves in a very green and lush tropical environment where a seemingly hungry beast is looking to invite the duo to dinner as the main course… or not. You decide.
Lately I’ve been greatly interested in painting fan art. I believe my interest in doing such comes from the years I spent working on my now-defunct Web comic, Dark Phantasy. My time was occupied illustrating nothing but things which were in their entirety nothing but my creations and the concepts of my comrades who wrote what we all hoped futilely would be an epic graphic novel.
My string of fan art illustrations are also expressions of my interests. Together they tell a very small story of who I am. This one is an expression of a recently acquired interest — Doctor Who. It is in my opinion the best television program in existence today. I know that is not saying much considering mostly what complete garbage occupies the tube these days, but the 2005 revival of the venerable show has been for the most part extremely enjoyable. This freshly completed fifth season has been exceptionally brilliant, and that season’s new Doctor is the one I illustrate in this piece. His tendency to explicate “Blimey!” is where the title comes from.
I wasn’t a fan of the show as a child. Where I lived the show aired on LPB, and the people there didn’t even bother to show the episodes in correct order. It created confusion for its young audience, but despite this the program was always a good laugh. Even as a wee lad I found the lack of production quality hilarious at times when I actually took the time to sit down and watch it. The new series doesn’t suffer from this problem. There’s been some bad episodes, but you’ll have that in any series.
My journey of painting this scene began with a conversation between my friend Jeff King and myself. I believe I was the one who stated that I missed collaboration like we enjoyed when working on the Web comic. I thought it’d be interesting for me to paint something then have a story be written to further illustrate a story surrounding the occurrences within the painting itself. He thought it to be a brilliant idea, so we started brainstorming what we would do. We fleshed out precisely the scene above. Everything about it was set in stone before I ever started my first sketch. Unfortunately as can be seen this illustration isn’t accompanied with solely a short story but instead this essay. Jeff’s free time has increasingly shrunken in size to the point it nearly seems improbable he could provide his part in this anytime soon. I decided to go ahead and publish what’s been completed, and when he’s achieved a short story to his standards I can publicize it at that time.
The painting had no particular deadline, and few knew about it. There was no reason to rush, so I took my dear sweet time with it. I started work on it on and finished it two weeks ago — several months. I’ve put more detail and precision into it than I’d perhaps normally do as a result. I usually work with ridiculously large canvasses so I wouldn’t have to spend a lot of time on details because a simple brush stroke when reduced to display size would register as detail. It’s like looking at a classic oil painting up close. This image in particular is originally 14,400×9000 split into seven parts with each PSD on average about a gigabyte in size. My computer can take the strain, so I might as well take advantage of it.
I did quite a bit of research on this, and I hope it shows. I investigated absolutely everything — even the scarf. However, I toiled the most on the TARDIS itself, and I believe I’m pretty damn close with my rendering of it. I’m at least as close as I’ll ever be without direct access to the actual prop itself.
The monster is completely my creation, and I believe we decided to call it a “Trucid”. It’s sort of a cross between a carnivorous dinosaur and a parrot with two rows of teeth. I sort of chuckled when the episode Vincent and the Doctor was aired and a parrot-like monster called the Krafayis was causing trouble in late 19th century France. Thankfully the one they created was a whole lot different than what I’ve done here.
All else I can say is whatever I do next time will be much more simpler than this. Enjoy.