Art for Christmas: The Tenth Doctor

I've wanted to try drawing the Tenth Doctor from Doctor Who for a long time, but I never seemed to get around to it...until this week.

Oldest Gal's best friend from school is a huge Doctor Who fan, and she loves David Tennant's Tenth Doctor best of all.  Oldest Gal wanted to get her a present, and we were trying to think of something special for a limited budget. ;)  It seemed like the perfect time to attempt capturing the Tenth Doctor in pen and ink. :)

I started by searching Google images for a good reference photo.  After browsing for a bit, I found this one and thought it had some potential:

Here's the rough pencil sketch I came up with:

[Side note: I apologize for the dark, round smudge that appears on many of these photos.  It's a problem I can't fix with my poor camera's lens.  The actual drawings did NOT have this on them.] :}

Here it is in color:

Unfortunately, this sort of forced perspective is pretty difficult to capture in a drawing, at least for me. ;)  The proportions just seem a little off.  It was super hard to get the sonic screwdriver to look right, too!!

But my biggest disappointment with this one was I felt it didn't really capture David Tennant's face the way I wanted it to.  I made his nose too curved (in my defense, it looked pretty curved in the reference photo), and by trying to portray some of his laugh lines and wrinkles, I think I made him look a little too old.  His eyes aren't quite right, and his mouth ended up looking kind of goofy in its half-open state.

I went ahead and finished the picture anyway, adding a green background.  It seems to look a little better from farther away. ;)

Here's a close up of his famous Converse shoes. :)

So, not too terrible for a first attempt...

...but I wasn't 100% pleased.  I also knew that if I went over to Oldest Gal's friend's house and saw this in her room, it would make me cringe. ;)

I started working on a picture of Ten in profile, but that was a complete disaster and ended up in the trash. :}

So then I found this photo and thought it might be just right.

This time around, I decided to try to kind of "cartoonize" David instead of trying to capture him exactly as he appeared in the picture.  I think it was a good decision; I'm much happier with this picture. :)  His neck is a bit too long, but other than that, I'm pretty pleased.

Here it is with all of the pencil erased.

And here he is in living color! ;)

Since I still don't have a great skin color in marker, I did his skin in colored pencil and the rest of him in marker, like I've been doing for my most recent pictures.

I think this is my favorite shot of the sketch.  My drawing is not an exact replica of the reference photo, but I think it captures the spirit of Ten.  I gave him a little more of a mischievous smirk than he had in the photo. :)  I also made his eyes kind of uneven on purpose, as they looked that way in the photo.

I started with a shadowy background in TARDIS blue...

...and then added a thin line of shading on the other side.

I checked with Oldest Gal, and she decided she would prefer the picture with a completely colored background, so I filled in the rest.  But then I had that pesky white space on the bottom that I normally end up with.  

I decided to go ahead and fill it in, even though it would look a bit weird.  I'm thinking of trying to frame this, and I wanted to have as much colored in as might be needed for the frame.

The bottom section ended up looking water stained.  And don't look too closely at the pin stripes, either...they really don't match! ;)  (I made them too thick and far apart in the first place, so it's not like they were great to begin with.)  At least I can always trim this part if I need to. :)

Overall, I'm super pleased with how Ten turned out, especially for my third attempt ever. 

What do you think?  Does he capture David Tennant's Doctor?  Try squinting...then he really looks accurate. ;)

Hope you enjoyed this little artsy post! ;)  Are any of you making things for Christmas gifts this year?