The Doctor Who Portrait Project

So after some watching and re-watching,  I’ve decided on a screenshot. This has always been my favourite 5th Doctor scene: Coming across a tray of celery on a table at a party, the Doctor looks over his own celery, then the celery on the tray… takes two stalks from the tray, compares them, picks one, and replaces his own celery with it.

It’s trickier than I’ve tried before – more of his body showing, hands present, face not very clear. I’ve got more screenshots of just his face in almost similar poses if I need them. I’m cautiously optimistic – this drawing went by a lot faster than my first attempt at the 4th Doctor.  Here’s my sketch:

Done a lot of work since last post. I’ve pretty much stopped using my screenshot reference and the walkthrough in the book. I decided I really didn’t like the impasto effect, so I’ve done a lot of work smoothing that out. I’ve done some work adding extra reflected light, and corrected the colour on the green part of scarf on the right side of the neck.

And of course, the final touches, the eyes. Finished at last! It was a long haul, but it’s worth it. I’m very happy with my progress on this one. On to Doctor number five!

I actually finished this step some time ago, but haven’t gotten around to posting it. Finished the first detail pass – a lot of work done on the jacket, the scarf, the background and the hat.  I’m finding I’m referring less and less to my reference image as I work. I’m still looking at it for the face, but I’ve been working on my own for everything else.

Next step in the process: blocking in. This went pretty  quickly, and I already feel I’m getting a better likeness than last time. Managed to get a little bit of step 3 done, a detail pass of the face.

I’m making good progress – I’m pretty psyched. Let’s hope I can get my momentum back.

Sorry I haven’t had much time to work on this lately, I’ve been busy all summer working on a few charity projects IRL.

I really didn’t like how the previous attempts at this Doctor were coming out, so I’ve decided to start again, with my usual method of working from a screenshot.  Since the previous three have all been fairly happy expressions, I’ve decided to go with something a bit more serious this time:

After a few rounds of sketching, I’ve got my base sketch!

This time  I’m planning on working through chapter one of Advanced Painter Techniques by Don Seegmiller, using this drawing instead of the one from the book. Wish me luck!

Been a while since I worked on this, but I’m getting kind of tired of working on this. I’ve learned a lot, but I’m eager to get this to a point where I can call it ‘done’ and move it on to the next one.

Mostly worked around the hair and face, but I’ve added some reflected light on the jacket and scarf. I’ll need to do another pass of this once I’ve got the head done.

A few touch-ups here and there on the scarf, but this time I’ve mostly focused on the face.  Hair is next. I think I’ll also have to adjust the colours on the scarf. They don’t seem quite right yet.

So, another critique, another repaint. Got another critique, a really harsh one this time, but just what I needed. I finally feel like I’m off on a good direction with this one, rather than just plodding along because it’s all I can do.

After some more advice from the lovely folks at ConceptArt, I’ve made a lot of little changes:

• enlarged the head a bit
• reworked the hand
• added buttons to the vest
• did some texturing
• added some interest to the background.

Another update on the Doctor, just working on refining things.