The Good Doctor(s) Part 2

Hello folks, hope that you all had a very pleasant Thanksgiving here in the US and if not, then I hope that you all had a very pleasant week. This is the final batch of Doctors that I had drawn up specifically for the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who. I must admit that this is my favorite of the two batches.

This is the suave, vegetable wearing, cricket enthusiast Fifth Doctor and he was played by the Peter Davison and his reign lasted from 1981-1984.

This garishly colored gentleman is the Sixth Doctor and I'm not altogether too sure why he was, but he was one of my favorites to draw. The Sixth Doctor was played by Colin Baker and his reign lasted from 1984-1986.

 

This quirky little gentleman with the bumbershoot is the Seventh Doctor and he was played by the equally quirky Sylvester McCoy (to most modern audiences, he is the one who played a great version of the eccentric wizard Radagast the Brown in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey). His reign was rather spotty, it lasted from 1987-1989 and then he popped up in 1996 for a one-night-only TV special.

This Lord Byron-like Doctor was the Eighth Doctor and he was played, rather magnificently, by Paul McGann. This Doctor started off in a one-night-only TV special in 1996 and ended his reign, in a manner of speaking, this year with the Mini Episode "The Night of the Doctor" and if you haven't seen it, then I highly recommend it.

This rather gloomy gentleman was the Ninth Doctor and he was played by Christopher Eccleston. He revived Doctor Who successfully in 2005 and he ended his reign that year, lasting only from March to June. Although it was short, he did help tremendously by reviving the series. Now the Ninth Doctor actually came into being in this past episode "The Day of the Doctor," for those who don't know SPOILERS (well, kind of), he is regenerated from John Hurt's "War Doctor" (I suppose that is his name).

This long-coated, gravity-defying haired gentleman is the Tenth Doctor and he was played, rather brilliantly by David Tennant and he is actually the Doctor that I grew up watching, so I have a bit of a soft spot for his particular Doctor (although the Fourth or the Seventh have to be my favorites). His reign lasted from 2005-2010.

This bow-tie wearing, chin-tastic gentleman is the Eleventh Doctor and he is currently being played by the equally brilliant Matt Smith and his fading reign will end this very year and was started in 2010. I do find that this Doctor is very well up there on the list of favorite Doctors, with his childish, yet professorial, persona that won me over quite instantly. Even after his reign ends, Bow-ties will still be cool.

 

 

Alrighty folks, that's it for now, but I hope to keep posting some brand-new things on this grand list of ramblings and hope that in the coming year that I will keep updating it, more than I have this year. Again, hope that you folks are having a wonderful week and I shall post something new, soon.

 

Cheers,

A. Taylor

Bilbo Baggins!! I'm not trying to rob you!!

There's some news on the horizon, folks. I'm starting something on Youtube and I think that it will be an interesting experience. In the meantime, here are some actually new drawings. Now, I've recently watched the Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and I've read the book as well (which is a really good read) and I've been in a Hobbit-y mood so I've been drawing various scenes from the Hobbit and the various characters from the book.

This one is the first drawing I've ever draw of Bilbo Baggins. This was almost entirely inspired by the movie with Martin Freeman's portrayl of Mr. Baggins.

This was entirely inspired by my own version of Bilbo that developed as I read the book itself. This was inspired by the scene when Biblo was sneaking through the forest towards the three trolls. Now this version might upset almost every hard core Tolkien fan, but this version seems to make sense to me. Bilbo was a character that would have packed his entire home and taken it with him on the journey, if he could. So I think that he would have looked like a bit of a posh British adventure and pseudo-huntsman, so Bilbo decides to adorn an Inverness cape and his best scarf and just looks like a bit of a well-dressed country Squire. Again, it only seems to make sense to me, but I enjoyed drawing him all the same.

Anyways, I'm very excited about the new things that are about to happen with Youtube and I will hopefully find more time to put some more doodles up here, soon. Right-o, hope you folks are well.

Cheers,

A. Taylor

Notes: the first and second Bilbos were drawn with waterproof ink and the second Bilbo was detailed with just a regular pencil. Still thinking about watercoloring them.

HUZZAH!!

FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Technology is finally starting to work in my favor, I'm finally able to post some pictures up here on the blog.

Anyways, with that little bit of relief out of the way, now I can explain some of the new pictures up here. These little paintings were done for a contest in which various artists were called upon to draw up some nymphs and I found out that one of the judges for this particular contest is one of my heroes, TONY DITERLIZZI! I could not resist, so I came up with these little cartoons. 

This particular picture is entitled "Sir Orpheus & The Nymphs," and it is my favorite out of the three of them, honestly. I think that it is because the rather melancholy knight was my favorite thing to draw and paint. This was drawn with waterproof ink and painted with Reeves watercolor paint and Prismacolor watercolor pencils. Some of the bark on the tree to the right and the grass was colored out with Sharpie markers.

This particular one is entitled "I Spy With My Little Eye," just because they all seemed to be playing I Spy to me, but that's just me. This one was drawn and painted in the same medium as the first.

As you keen readers will have noticed, the first picture and the second, that the signature is backwards. The reason behind that is that my trusty scanner malfunctioned on me (do you sense a pattern with me and technology), so I had to improvise and use my webcam to take quick shots of the pictures.

This one was entitled "The Trickster & The Queen," and this was definitely inspired by W. W. Denslow's illustrations for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum, particularly with the guards at either side of the Queen with the hydrangeas at the end of their rifles. They were my favorite parts of this picture. Done with the same medium as the previous pieces.

Now the results for the contest will be presented the 28th of this month (less than a week away), and, in the meantime you folks can see the other artists' submissions (which are far, far, FAR more impressive than my meager efforts) and you can merely click here.

Hope this spring of luck continues,

Cheers,

A. Taylor

Good Ol' Fashioned Adverts

These were taken at the Auburn Cord Duesenburg Museum in Auburn, Indiana. I just thought these were interesting. I'll have some actual drawing work up here sometime in the near future (maybe some motorcars?).

Cheers,

A. Taylor

Further Exploration

 I've been still doing some test runs with my new Micron pen and this first drawing is based off of a hovercar from a book that I recently finished called The Search for WondLa, by author and illustrator Tony DiTerlizzi. It is a great book and so is the one that follows it called A Hero for WondLa, I highly recommend them.

This next drawing is of one of my favorite characters, Severus Snape from Harry Potter. Granted this one isn't finished yet and he isn't dressed in his professorial robes, but I thought that it would be interesting to draw Snape in civilian clothes and lost in thought, so to speak. I'll be posting the finished product up here soon.
This last drawing was just a little character that I doodled one day and just inked it with the Micron.
Right-o, thanks for enduring the rambling, I'll have something official up here soon, with any luck.

Keep a sharp eye out...

Cogito Ergo Zoom

 One of my favorite books is The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame and everytime I read it I can't help but think of old-fashioned motorcars of that era that Grahame had written this great work. I always loved the sort of clunky quality of those old motorcars and steamcars of the age when the automotive industry was just blooming. Although this little doodle at the side here is a  thoroughly made-up version of those motorcars, I still love those old cars.

Also, one of my favorite characters from The Wind in the Willows, besides Mr. Toad that is, is Ratty. I have always enjoyed his amiable nature and how he just wants to go scullying in his boat along the river. Ratty has that sort of nature that is familiar to all of us because we are or we know someone similar to Ratty. This version was sort of inspired by a movie version of Grahame's book in which the great Mark Gatiss portrays him down to a T I think. I have no idea why he would be smoking a pipe here, but it suits him all the same.



Notes: To start off the title of this post is a sort of play on words to the Latin saying Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am), but this one means "I think, therefore I go really fast." As you can tell, I really enjoy wordplay, too. Now, the first drawing was more of a doodle and was drawn with just a regular mechanical pencil and the second was drawn with a fine point pen.

Keep a sharp eye out...

To the Moon! (and other places)

 I had recently seen the movie Hugo and also read the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret and I really enjoyed them (and highly recommend them). When I was waiting for a class to start one day, I decided, purely out of whim to draw the Man in the Moon with the rocket in its eye, like film, From the Earth to the Moon, by Georges Melies (I know there are accents over the two "e"s, sorry). I soon became kind of obsessed with the drawing.

 Now, whenever I have time to kill I have just been doodling the Man in the Moon. I particularly like how, in the movie, not so much in the book, how the stars are drawn. Most stars are drawn the typical fashion so that they kind of look like exaggerated letter A's, but these stars actually look like stars, at least in my way of thinking. The last drawing in this post is just me fiddling with the idea of an anthropomorphising a planet...

Voila...SATURN!

Granted it might not catch on, but, either way, I enjoyed drawing these characters, all the same.

Hopefull I'll have something fairly new up here, soon.

Keep a sharp eye out.

Notes: the first doodle was drawn with a fine-tipped pen and the rest were drawn in pencil.

The Detective Scribbles, No. 4, Miss Jane Marple

This is the latest drawing in the series of doodles entitled "The Detective Scribbles," and this time it is the famous spinster detective who lives in the quaint little village of Saint Mary Mead, Miss Marple. This is sort of a sequel to a previous scribble, the one of Monsieur Hercule Poirot, so this is, more specifically, another tribute to the prolific crime writer, Agatha Christie. The character of Miss Marple, however, connects with me on a personal level. This is a favorite character of my father and I can see why. She is a very down-to-earth person who is as sharp as a tack. Marple is basically  a keen and specific detective who takes the guise of an old woman who knits. The character of Miss Marple is sensible, not eccentric like Poirot and that's what Christie must have thought about this character, too. There is an interesting story about Christie with her relationship with Poirot: Christie, much like the author Arthur Conan Doyle with his character of Sherlock Holmes, was sick and tired of Poirot and sick of writing stories about him. Some stories have come about that she wrote Curtain, Poirot's last case, just so she could say a sort of "that's it for you." Christie wanted to experiment with other characters besides Poirot, Marple was one of those other characters.
Miss Marple appeared in her first story entitled Murder at the Vicarage and since then (up until her last story entitled Sleeping Murder) she has sort of enchanted readers with her sharp logic and rapier-like way of solving puzzles. Marple was said to have been inspired by Christie's grandmother, who was said to be scarily like Marple, she could tell when there wasn't something quite right. Marple's surname even fits this character's personality. There is another story about her genesis, of her surname, at least. Christie went to an estate sale, or something of that sort, and bought a chair whose company name was Marple or that the people who owned the chair was the family Marple. Either way, to name a character after a chair just reflects how down-to-earth this character is, but, like I wrote before, she is as sharp as a tack. I love these sort of characters who appear to be one thing, but, in turn, surprise you with their characteristics. This is why Marple is one of my favorite detectives, and I know I say this with every detective, but I have always had a soft spot for Miss Marple because she does remind me greatly of my grandmothers, who could cut you to ribbons with their words. Basically, Miss Marple is a good detective and her stories are well written.
She, much like Poirot, has been adapted in various ways, but this drawing was inspired by the actress Joan Hickson, who I think was a nicely played Miss Marple. Of course, like with Poirot, I found out about Marple whilst watching a program that I have mentioned time and time again, the program is Masterpiece Mystery, which I rather enjoy. Nowadays, however, Marple is brilliantly portrayed by actress Julia McKenzie, who I think is comparable to Hickson in her portrayal. Now, until next time, I shall have another detective adorned on this blog soon, so keep a sharp eye out for my next post.
Notes: She was drawn using water-proof ink and a dip pen with a pencil to lightly outline some of the wrinkles and such.

The Detective Scribbles, No. 3, Kurt Wallander

Sorry about the long delay, but here it is, the next in the Detective Scribbles Series and this time it is the Swedish bloodhound, Kurt Wallander. This is, by far, the most disturbed detective that I have ever seen, but he does get the job done. This detective was the brainchild of Swedish author Henning Mankell and his books, along with the British version of the series on Masterpiece Mystery, a program I talk about often in this series of scribbles and meanderings, anyway, the books show a Sweden that is not blissful and beautiful, but it shows the dirty underbelly that is behind this picturesque facade.
Wallander's character was introduced in the story Faceless Killers, which is a story reflecting not only the pure evil of the crime, but of the dark sin of humanity, racism. Since then this detective has enthralled its readers throughout minute parts of the globe. I, personally and unfortunately, have not read the books by this author, but I have seen the series that stars Kenneth Branagh and it is very good. What I liked about the series is that the main character is basically a tortured soul, and you don't commonly find that in any other crime series, at least to this extent. Wallander fuels himself with junk food and has eyes as red as a bloodhound, I think that is how his author described him, and also this character basically kills himself inside and out through every single case, because he always feels personally responsible for every case that is handed to him. Again, I hate to sound like a broken record, but I have never seen such a fictional detective become so personal with their cases, take so much of it to heart. Wallander is a perfect detective with more than one vice about him, but that is what makes a good character I think, their graces are only as good as their flaws, and that is what makes Wallander one of my favorite detectives.
Wallander took quite a long time to figure out what he would look like. I thought at first that he should have blonde hair, but I thought it would see too cliche, since Wallander is not the stereotypical Swedish character. Then I thought that he should just be a dark character, since he is very much dark and macabre. He is a bit like the American gumshoe with the sprawling city as their home with the flickering fluorescent lights just outside their windows, Wallander is much like that sort of character. So then, with that in mind, I decided that he should have just very ratty things, since he takes very little care of himself, and just to make him more film noir-ish, I thought that he should have the upturned collar that is mostly hiding his haggard face. So I quickly drew him in pencil as an outline and drew over it with a dip pen, using waterproof ink, and then used the same ink, but instead I used a brush, to darken him, which seemed to fit Wallander quite nicely.
There are plenty more detectives to come in this series, so keep a sharp eye out for my next post.
Note: If you would like to explore the author Henning Mankell's website click here.

Some Tintin...Well, actually Calculus

Here is the first colored picture to grace this post. Noted, it probably isn't that good, but I had fun painting one of my favorite characters in the Tintin series, the absent-minded and hard of hearing Professor Cuthbert Calculus, or, as he is known in the actual French text, Tryphon Tournesol.
This interesting little character made his first appearance in Red Rackham's Treasure in the Tintin series, the same comic the movie is based off of (see the post entitled "Nostalgia & Comics" to see the movie trailer). The inspiration for the look of Professor Calculus was from an actual person, a Swiss scientist by the name of Auguste Picard. Just as a small history lesson, Picard was a physicist and balloonist and was very tall. Herge once said that he had made Calculus a sort of "mini-Picard" because he would have to enlarge the frames if he didn't. If you would like to look further into the scientist's life click here to see the wikipedia page about Picard.
Also, as a mere side note, I realized that the character's name is actually Professor Calculus, not Doctor, but the ink had already dried before I came to that sobering fact. Most sincere apologies to those diligent readers.
Keep a sharp eye out for my next post.

The Detective Scribbles, No. 2, Mister Nero Wolfe



For those devoted followers and readers to this blog, you will remember that I had sent out into the ether a little riddle. The riddle can be found in the previous post, to help reduce the rambling. Now, to continue, here is my new piece of work for the series entitled "The Detective Scribbles," and it is the corpulent American amateur detective Nero Wolfe.

For those who do not know of this colossal calculator, Nero Wolfe, here is a brief explanation. The character of Wolfe and his trusty sidekick, Archie Goodwin, came from the brain of one man by the name of Rex Stout, who was, coincidental, an Indiana native (which was a fact I didn't know about until early this summer). Stout, for those interested in his works, was born in Bloomington, Indiana, just a further explanation on the tid-bit of information given. Anyway, back to the character of Nero Wolfe. Wolfe made his first appearance sitting in his brownstone on West 35th street in 1934 in a story called Fer-de-Lance and it was well reviewed as being a work of genius. Since Wolfe's genesis was during a period known as "The Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Wolfe had more eccentricities than you could shack a stick at. For instance, Wolfe, who is described as being "a seventh of a ton" in the stories, is always punctual when it came to his meals, and his meals consisted of only the best cuisine that came from his manservant Fritz Brenner. When Wolfe was having his meals it was made clear that no one, absolutely no one, was to disturb Wolfe during his meals, which almost seems to border on the religious for any character.

Another of Wolfe's eccentricities was his absolute love of orchids. His orchidophile attitude was nearly as religious as his meals, note that I am sure that orchidophile is a severely made-up word. He tended to them as if they were family. Although these are just two of Wolfe's many eccentricities, it is true to form that Wolfe is the American version of Sherlock Holmes.

Speaking of which, you might find small, almost minute, similarities with Stout's Wolfe and Doyle's Holmes. One of which is very prominent, almost "a seventh of a ton" prominent, it is the almost uncanny resemblance to Holmes' brother Mycroft. You  could flip through the story of The Greek Interpreter and find some distinct similarities. Both of them are very, very corpulent computers, basically. It is even speculated in some circles that Wolfe is the child of Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes, which could explain the resemblance. Also this could explain the similar amount of syllables in both Holmes' and Wolfe's names. But I shall quit this speculation and try to wrap this up.

To conclude this post I shall recommend that anyone interested in Crime Fiction, especially American Crime Fiction, try to find a copy of one of Rex Stout's analytical detective Nero Wolfe and his trusty sidekick Archie Goodwin, they are certainly entertaining. Click here to go to the wikipedia page about Nero Wolfe and the Wolfe stories.

Both of these drawings, sorry for the abrupt transition, were drawn with an old fashioned dip-pen that I had bought near at the beginning of the summer. I was not qutie sure which Wolfe picture to present on this blog, because I admire this character deeply, so I cut off all deliberation and decided to post both. The one at the beginning of this post was my favorite and most faithful out of the two because of the orchid, but I had accidently put Wolfe smiling, which I found to be odd since he is such a serious character, so this second one here sort of balances it out, I think, but it is a mere speculation. I shall, perhaps put some clues for the next detective in this series before the week's out, mainly because I am still deliberating which detective to draw next. If you, being, hopefully, a faithful audience, have any suggestions, please do leave them in the comment section of this post. Thanks.

Keep a sharp eye out for my next post.

Books and Scribbles

 Over the summer months I have had time, quite a lot of time, actually, to go to the bookstore in town to buy some secondhand books just to keep myself occupied as the summer rolls onward. One of the books that I have purchased is a children's book called Dinosaur Summer by Greg Bear, but what I hadn't realized was that it was illustrated by Tony DiTerlizzi, an illustrator who I greatly admire. If you have not heard of Mr. DiTerlizzi and his work then here are a few of his pieces of work. He is mostly famed for his collaboration with author Holly Black with the series The Spiderwick Chronicles, which are lavishly and quite creatively done. Another is The Spider and the Fly, it is a delightfully macabre poem that was written by Mary Howitt and illustrated by Mr. DiTerlizzi. He is, in short, one of my favorite illustrators that is still in the land of the living and if you want to try to take a personal gander at his work before purchasing any of it go to his website here, I will grant that you will not be sorry.
To get back on track, this small scribble of the man with the camera was inspired by one of the characters that was in Dinosaur Summer, the main character of the book, if I am correct. To briefly summarize the book it is set in the thirties in America, but it isn't the world that we are all familiar with, it is set in the same world that was created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It isn't Sherlock Holmes' bustling world of London, though, it from one of his more strict characters, Professor Edward Challenger. For those not familiar with this particular character, he is a bearded, brutish man who finds an island that is inhabited with dinosaurs, this story of Mr. Bear's is very similar in that regard. It is a great adventure story about dinosaurs, fictional and otherwise, and film-making as well, I would recommend it to anyone who has time to kill.
This regally bowing character to the right here was inspired by one of my favorite stories when I was growing up, and it still is, it is Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Although this very much looks like a mouse, I always sort of thought that it was Rat from the whimsical story. Granted that I didn't truly doodle him to be a spitting image of Rat from the story, I enjoyed doodling it all the same.
This last and final scribble in this post needs no real introduction, mainly because it has his name clearly scribbled upon it. This is just a small doodle of one of the most eccentric sleuths in detective fiction, Monsieur Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie's famous brainchild. Although he may not be the quintessential Poirot with the messy and owl-like eyebrows, it started out as merely as an experiment. I have recently gotten a dip pen with different nibs as well as a practically brand new bottle of ink. This small scribble was mainly the result of me experimenting with that particular pen on a scrap piece of watercolor paper.
I know that I may have crammed three new drawings into one post, but finally I shall quit rambling and end...keep a sharp eye out for my next post.

Nostalgia & Comics

This is merely a post that expresses my excitement for a new movie that is due to come out sometime in the holiday season. The movie in question is called The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. As the post's title clearly specifies, this post is mainly about me reminiscing about the "early days," so to speak. When I was a little kid I loved the Tintin cartoons when it was on TV and I also loved the comics that inspired both this upcoming movie and the cartoon series.

Here is a brief bit of history of Tintin. The creator of the series is named Hergé (a pseudonym that belonged to a cartoonist whose real name was Georges Prosper Remi). He was a popular cartoonist and actually was one of the many cartoonists that inspired me to continue drawing. Some of my favorite characters in the series was Dr. Calculus and Thompson and Thomson, as well as Tintin, of course, and his faithful companion, his wire fox terrier, Snowy. Hergé had taken his lovable characters all over the globe in various adventures, but their adventures only seemed to merely halt momentarily when the creator died, but the franchise of the investigative reporter still goes strong today, and especially with this scribbler. I would recommend to anyone who enjoys adventure stories to check out some of the Tintin exploits and hopefully enjoy them as much as I have. I am, in short, very excited about this upcoming movie and I have here posted the new trailer for the movie. I, also, shall be posting some other scribbles in due time. Thanks for enduring the rambling. (Note: I realize that the subtitles and such are in French, but I believe that you, being a clever audience, will get the overall plot.)