Farmall F-20 Tractor Painting

So for Christmas this year my dad requested a painting of his Farmall F-20 tractor, which is his favorite. I painted it in two days, using reference photos of the area around our house and the tractor. In the background is our ye olde road grader. Acrylic on canvas.

Reference photo of the tractor:

Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Food

So for the 50th Anniversary of "Doctor Who" I went the whole nine yards and made a pasta salad and tons of desserts!

Firstly, the salad is a bowtie pasta salad from here. I used provolone cheese, green peppers, pepperoni, cherry tomato halves, and zesty Italian dressing.

Next I made some standard cut-out cookies. There's the eleven doctors, John Hurt's Doctor, and a guess at what Twelve's costume will look like. As you can see, John Hurt's Doctor was wounded in the Time War after falling from the counter :-(. I'm aware some of the details are off: Ten should have converse and the colors on Six's coat are wrong, but it was getting late and I was tired.

I also made some Seal of Rassilon cookies, which are harder to frost than they look.

Easier to make are the Gallifreyan writing cookies, which say "Fifty Years of Doctor Who" in Gallifreyan, using the method here.

Then I made some chocolate cupcakes. The Dalek designs and a printable pdf are available here.

I frosted the rest of the cupcakes and made them the space-time vortex. I put some half chocolate TARDISes on the tops of some of them.

The chocolate TARDISes and Daleks I made using the awesome mold you can buy here. 

I also made some ice cubes from the same tray. EX-TER-MIN-ATE!

And of course there's fish fingers and custard. The custard is just regular vanilla pudding, but the fish fingers are an ingenious cookie recipe available here.

link to post on tumblr here

Happy birthday Doctor Who, and may you continue for another 50 years!

True Magic Bookmark

So I made this bookmark for a contest and had it half done before I realized that digital art wasn't allowed but I finished it anyway. The hand-drawn one is below. The quote, "Books may well be the only true magic" is attributed to Alice Hoffman. Neuschwanstein castle from Germany is on the top. All photos used in the bookmark are either mine or from online free stock (credited below). All the quotes spiraling out of the book are from works in the public domain.

link to tumblr: (x)

The book quotes are from the following works (roughly left to right): Moby Dick by Herman Melville, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. 

I honestly didn't realize I'd chosen three books by Charles Dickens, sorry about that, I was trying not to repeat too many authors. You can tell I read a lot of classics. :-/

Stock photo of open book: (x)

Stock photo of stack of books: (x)

Here's the hand-drawn one, again featuring Neuschwanstein castle and the same quotes, minus one or two. Made using colored pens and pencils. Behind the spiraling quotes there's a stack of books and two pairs of wings; they're really hard to see because the scanner lightened them so much.

Peladon Digital Art

So it's been a while and I finally finished my drawing of King Peladon! He's a secondary character in the Classic Doctor Who episode "The Curse of Peladon." The Doctor (Three) arrives on the planet Peladon with his companion Jo, and, with the help of King Peladon, prevents a rebel overthrow and allows Peladon (the planet) to be admitted to the Galactic Federation. King Peladon is played by the excellent David Troughton (son of Patrick Troughton).

The piece is done digitally, using Corel Photo-Paint X5. It took several months of on-and-off work, but I think it turned out alright! Most of it was done using a stylus and tablet, and there's some minor textures digitally added to the background. There's also a bit of VanGogh style in the torches. :-)

link to tumblr: (x)

Reference photos (copyright BBC):

Doctor Who Playing Cards

**Currently for sale on etsy here**

You may remember that a while ago I posted this, a sneak preview of my Doctor Who playing cards, which I have now finished! The four suits are: the sonic screwdriver (10's), the Seal of Rassilon, a dalek, and a weeping angel. 4 colors: blue, green, red, and orange. Face cards have an extra gold stripe denoting them as such. The Jokers are the first and last faces of the Master (Roger Delgado and John Simm, respectively). The back of the cards sport the TARDIS, the Seal of Rassilon, and Gallifreyan text (using the method here). The Gallifreyan reads (in various places) "bad wolf" "bigger on the inside" "gallifrey" and "kasterborous".

As an update (2-15), I have now made a second set of cards. Both sets feature Doctors One through Eleven on cards Ace-Jack. The original set, however, features Idris as the Queen and the Brigadier as the King, and the new set has Twelve (Capaldi) on the Queen and the TARDIS on the King. Otherwise the sets are identical. The original set is now discontinued.

Set 1 (2013) (discontinued):

Set 2 (2014):

There have been inquiries as to whether I am selling decks of cards, and I am! A deck (Set 2, with the slight modification of Michelle Gomez on the second Joker instead of John Simm, as the newest Master/Missy) is $12 + shipping. The decks are professionally printed, and each comes shrink-wrapped and with Jokers and a matching box. I am currently selling them through etsy here, and thanks for the interest! :-)

Percepliquis Painting

So today I just finished my Percepliquis painting (it took me 5 days). Percepliquis is an ancient, ruined, underground and half-submerged city in the book "The Heir of Novron" (aka "Wintertide" & "Percepliquis") by the brilliant Michael J. Sullivan. The books are well worth a read, and I would strongly recommend them to anyone into medieval, Lord-of-the-Rings-style, thief-and-con-man fantasy. You can learn more at Sullivan's website. The painting is an original composition, drawing strongly on the description of the city and its surroundings as detailed in the book. Acrylic on canvas:

Now I open the jpeg on my computer, and five minutes later I have this (yes, I know underground there's no sun, or indeed much light at all but lens flares are so cool....... :-)  ) :

At least this is an improvement over my last Percepliquis drawing. *shudders*. 

Superwholock Darwin Quote

So here's a piece I did digitally, with photo credits and more at (x). 

It features Supernatural (going into its ninth season), Sherlock (going in its third season), and Doctor Who, hitting 50 years this November. Long live Who!

While in Germany...

So I was in Germany recently, and while I was there I drew this:

The crenelated tower to the right of the tall black one is one of Neuschwanstein's towers, and the exploding tower second from the left is a nod to something that happened at a battle in Rothenburg (two places I visited while abroad).

Doctor Who Playing Cards

I'm working on a series of Doctor Who-themed playing cards. Here's a sneak peek of the front and back of the Fifth Doctor card.

EDIT: Post with the finished set here.

7 Wonders of the World Skateboard

I went to an art competition a couple of months ago and did this with Sharpie. The New 7 Wonders of the World, from left to right: Machu Picchu in Peru, Christ the Redeemer Statue in Rio, Chichen Itza in Mexico, the Colosseum in Rome, Petra in Jordan, the Taj Mahal in India, and the Great Wall of China.

Doctor Who Ukrainian Eggs

This Easter I made some Ukrainian eggs, as I usually do. These eggs are hollow, their insides having been blown out. Melted wax is then applied using a kiska, a sort of funnel attached to a handle. They are then dipped in dye, and the part protected by the wax remains the original color. 

Naturally, I themed mine on "Doctor Who". The TARDIS one on the left, in the picture shown below, I made last year; the one on the right is this year's product, and features the Seal of Rassilon. 

Doctor Who Digital Art

I figured out how to use Adobe Elements, and this happened. The stills/gifs are all from DW, and the quotes are from various sources.

Neuschwanstein Castle

In anticipation of my upcoming trip to Germany (!!!!!), here's a quick pen sketch of Neuschwanstein Castle. The castle was built by "crazy" King Ludwig II in 1862 in Bavaria, Germany. King Ludwig II came to power young, only to have his kingdom invaded by Prussia two years later. Now a king in name only, he became possessed by ideas of fantasy, and built for himself a series of fantastic castles in which he could feel a true king.

Pillars of Creation Painting

Yesterday I painted this, the Pillars of Creation, located in the Eagle Nebula.

Angels in Manhattan Art

Here's my completed watercolor of the still from "The Angels Take Manhattan". The reference photo is posted down here vvvvvv somewhere, if you're interested.