4th Doctor Investigating the Dandelion (“Doctor Who”)
Watercolor, 9 x 12 We're back to the world of Doctor Who fan art on today's new topic for this month, and also, the very first Doctor Who fan art to be painted in full watercolor! Every of my Doctor Who drawings, from the first fan art to the favorit…
We're back to the world of Doctor Who fan art on today's new topic for this month, and also, the very first Doctor Who fan art to be painted in full watercolor! Every of my Doctor Who drawings, from the first fan art to the favorite Doctor character drawings are all done in digital drawing medium, on the Autodesk SketchBook software, which the last time I shared one was the 13th Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) character drawings from last November, during the 60th anniversary celebration of the show.
What's exciting about this one is that, not only it happens to be my very first Doctor Who watercolor artwork piece, this also happens to be my first fan artwork to illustrate from the Classic Doctor Who series. So today, we're going to be exploring on the first Classic Doctor Who watercolor fan art, featuring the 4th Doctor, played by Tom Baker.
The drawing illustrates the first episode of the Tom Baker era in the Doctor Who series called "Robot", just right after the Doctor regenerates and putting on new set of clothes, he investigates a supposedly squashed dandelion, to which he explains to Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart and Harry Sullivan that the dandelion was actually flatten by an escaped robot. Not only is this done in watercolor, but this is also actually painted by traditional watercolor paints, instead of the watercolor pencils I would normally use. I got the set of the actual paints at Hobby Lobby, and it comes with a case, tubes of paint, eraser, palette, pencil, sharpener, and four paintbrushes.
The 4th Doctor is the very first classicDoctor I watched from the Classic Doctor Who series. After being recommended to check out and watch one of the classic episodes on Instagram, I thought of started watching the Tom Baker era episodes on BritBox, and I thought Baker did a very wonderful job playing the Doctor. I enjoyed the 4th Doctor's personality from the way Baker played him, adding charm, quirkiness, and comical relief, which is something you can't help but enjoy the character of this Doctor, or any of the Doctors, depending which actor comes in. Funny enough, if I can say any of Disney animated characters who can relate to the 4th Doctor, I would say Lumiere in Beauty and the Beast (1991) and the Genie from Aladdin (1992). The one thing I really like about the 4th Doctor is his iconic long scarf, and the hat, which reminds me a bit of the Indiana Jones hat.
I would definitely consider the 4th Doctor as my favorite Classic Doctor, and one of my favorite Doctors of the series, so who knows? I could do a full character drawing of him, and if you Who fans are up for it, count me in! 😁
Way before working on this project, the first time I drew the 4th Doctor in my animation look is from drawing him in a rough pen sketch on a small 5.5 x 8.5 drawing pad from last year. Of course, another one I did was in digital drawing on Autodesk SketchBook, which that was for creating a full artwork page for the Doctor Who and Autism Celebrations for my friend Mason Milne's podcast, Crohn's & Autism Awareness Advocate to celebrate Doctor Who's 60th anniversary and getting prepared for the New Who specials on Disney+.
First 4th Doctor Drawings
Rough Pen on Drawing Pad, 5.5 x 8.5
Digital drawing, 1080 x 1420
Speaking on animation, I've got to watch the abandoned episode called "Shada". It features animation sequences for scenes that were either cut out or destroyed, and the characters are voiced by the original actors, including Tom Baker himself. I like the animation of it, it does remind of the art style of the 60s' comic books, which fits for the Classic Who era, when you think about it. You can watch the "Shada" episode on Tubi, including the animated missing episodes of the 2nd Doctor (Patrick Troughton), which I've seen clips of it on YouTube, and I did watch one on Tubi, as well.
So, let's go ahead and dive down to the simple step-by-step process in making of this first Doctor Who watercolor fan art!
4th Doctor and Dandelion Drawing 1 (Sketching & Cleaning Up Process)
Before getting started on this project, I had to watch the clip of the dandelion scene from "Robot" episode, in order to figure out what pose do I want to draw the 4th Doctor, while he closely investigates the dandelion. He is bending his knees down, as he exams the dandelion, realizing that it's already flatten, after the robot escapes, which is the exact pose that Baker did in the episode.
The first process of this project was lightly sketching the entire drawing in rough pencil. Besides watching the clip, I used couple of my first 4th Doctor drawings, both the rough pen sketch and the digital drawing piece as my character model guides to keep the exact animation design of the 4th Doctor as how I first drew him.
Once the sketching was done, I added four strips of blue tape around the edges of the drawing, and then, begin the clean-up drawing process, using the ink pens in black, green (for outlines of the trees and grass), and orange (outlines for the dandelion).
4th Doctor and Dandelion Drawing 2 (Painting the Doctor in Color)
After the entire drawing is sketched and cleaned up with outlines, and erasing all of the light pencil outlines, next step was getting the 4th Doctor in color. This coloring process is much different than how I worked any of my watercolor drawings with the watercolor pencils, since getting the actual watercolor paint kit.
So, I tend to focus on painting the character in color first. Later on, I'll move on to painting the background. The shadows for both character and background will be saved for last.
Once again, I used two of my first 4th Doctor drawings as my guide to draw in the design on how I drew him, but for the coloring process, the digital drawing piece became my main guide in painting him in color to keep the exact colors.
4th Doctor and Dandelion Drawing 3 (Painting the Background)
Then, I painted the background setting, beginning with the light contrast (to create the lightening effect on the trees and grass), and later on, I can go back and paint it with bit of darker contrast.
4th Doctor and Dandelion Drawing 4 (Adding Shadows & Finished)
Last thing to paint was adding dark shadows on both the 4th Doctor and background. I wanted to paint the shadows on the background first, using mixture of grey black and dark green for the trees and grass, and also mixing grey black and dark brown for creating shadows on the tree bark on each tree. I also painted a very light gray for the bright cloudy gray sky to create dark contrast on the bottom.
Finally, I painted the shadows on the 4th Doctor. Some parts of painting the shadows on the Doctor weren't mixed with grey black to create darker colors. For example, in painting the Doctor's red jacket, because it's painted in red, I used mixture of dark brown and red paint to create dark red. Before that, I went back to painting the Doctor's red suit to darken up the red color, using bit of dark brown in lighter contrast.
In finishing this project, I painted a shadow on the bottom of the grass, beneath the spot, where the Doctor's bending down.
It was finished on August 1st, 2024.
I hope you all enjoyed reading on my very first Doctor Who watercolor fan art on today's topic, and if you would like to see any of my previous Doctor Who drawings, you can find them here on this blog, The Autistic Animator's Desk.
If you just happened to be a new reader and interested in subscribing, please feel free to subscribe to The Autistic Animator's Desk to get noticed for any of newest animation art projects, and if you would like for me to do a commissioned drawing, please sent me an email. I'm on Discord, Instagram, Facebook, and on YouTube, where you can watch any of my animation pencil tests.
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