Sunday, August 19, 2007

Sontaran drawing (done in 1990)

This is a drawing I did in 1990 that I thought I'd scan in and post just for the hell of it. It's a Doctor Who related one featuring some bad dudes called Sontarans.

I drew this because I intended it to be the front cover of a Doctor Who fanzine, Cybernetix, I was doing as a teenager back in the late '80s / early '90s (pictured below). I'll post more about the fanzine at a later date, but basically I was a member of the Cardiff DWAS Local Group (or the CLG) and several members contributed articles and it ran for 3 issues and one "special issue" (which wasn't actually that "special" really - more of an attempt to use up the remaining material). This artwork was intended to be the cover of a 4th issue that I never got around to doing for some reason - probably because I was in sixth-form and had discovered pubs etc.

I remember that the "in" technique at the time with "Who" fan artists was to make up drawings from thousands of tiny ink dots. I suppose the main reason for this is that the artwork photocopies extremely well if it is drawn in this way (pencil drawings once photocopied always look rubbish). The other reason is this technique is quite forgiving in that you can conceal errors easily by increasing dot-density in dodgy areas. This drawing was one of my numerous attempts at the "Whofan multi-dot" style. I must admit that to draw things in this way is a bitch to do - it takes absolutely forever and it makes your hand go numb. I do however think that the results are quite nice.

Some Doctor Who fanzines I made during the late '80s/early '90s - 4 issue of "Cybernetix" and issue 1 of "CSO"

2 comments:

nailgungfx said...

Absolutely brilliant works! If I'm not mistaken the style you refer to is generally called "pointilism" and yeah it takes forever (I'm too lazy to engage any works in that style hahahaha) but it looks spectacular. Well done once more my son! And thanks for sharing these! Funnily enough you've never shown me your Sci-Fi works :)

DrGaz said...

"Funnily enough you've never shown me your Sci-Fi works :)"

Haha! I would never admit this as a student for fear of damaging the enormous about of street-cred I had!

Actually Doctor Who has a rich design heritage (40 years of stunning and original prop design, set design, graphics and music), and it is what inspired me to get into design in the first place.