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My cover illustration for issue 257 of Data Extract, the Doctor Who Club of Australia‘s magazine, showing Peter Capaldi as the Doctor. I’m fairly sure it was published in September 2023. It’s a mixture of traditional and digital techniques. Poster prints are on the way if you like that sort of thing, and I think there’s another cover in the pipeline.

If you’re here because you read David J Howe’s stunning non-fiction book (about fiction) The Who Adventures, hello and thanks for visiting. It’s nice to be briefly a little bit famous for two pieces of art from 1996.

It really is an amazing book. David’s books about Doctor Who tend to be definitive and this one is no exception. I feel a bit bad for not offering more info to David, given the extraordinary level of behind-the-scenes detail other illustrators and writers shared. For example, I produced a third interior illustration for the novel SLEEPY, which might pop up on this forsaken website at some point.

While you’re here, why not have a look at the Doctor Who section of this site?

Old Sixie is a whimsical four-page comic partly serialised in Data Extract 247 and 248, and printed in full in the double issue 250/251. The script is by Darran Jordan, with art and lettering by me. It’s based on a true story related by the actor Colin Baker in his column for the newspaper Bucks Free Press, but shamelessly embellished by Professor Jordan. Darran generously allowed me a free hand in drawing it. The first page is here, along with a panel or two from later in the story. Click the pics to open larger versions.

Here’s the pencil art for page 2 panel 5 of Old Sixie before inking. My default style is pencil art with watercolour hues, but that wouldn’t have been appropriate for this type of story, so inks it was. The pencils have an analogue character that’s missing from the published version.

Cutting Room Floor

My panels are drawn separately and composited in Adobe InDesign. The very last panel of Old Sixie was cropped after drawing, because when it was placed on the page, I could see that the background detail of the other bridge climber was just a distraction. The elderly gent ended up on the cutting room floor. So if there’s some award for the lamest bonus material ever, please consider voting for this:

The League is an 8-page jam comic scripted by Craig Land and illustrated by several artists including yours truly. It was published in issue 250/251 of Data Extract, the venerable magazine of the Doctor Who Club of Australia.

The project was first floated way back in 2019. Some of the artists were interviewed for Data Extract issue 244 in Spring 2019 — but with the actual strip seeing print nearly three years later, the interview must have been mystifying for readers.

The hook for this story was that you get to see various Doctor Who companions interacting, so I went with a realistic style with strict likenesses. The initial panel layouts were created by using 3D modelling software to place “actors” into scenes, then laying photo-reference faces over the top. It was a mixed success; some of the panels are a bit cringeworthy. Here’s some behind the scenes art for a few panels. Click the pics to see larger versions.