Mettula Orionsis

I didn't see that Pearl Mackie had to cancel her appearance at Gallifrey One, and that's the only portrait I've finished.

I should really do Susan next, as Carole Ann Ford's signature was the first one I ever got, and it was just on a scrap of paper. BUT Nicola and Colin were one of my earliest drawings, and I've never been satisfied with it, and they've both been so nice to me (especially Nicola, encouraging my art), so I've always wanted to try again. Using this photo as a ref, because they're such animal lovers IRL.

The nice thing about Pearl Mackie pulling out is that it gives me another chance to try to draw her portrait. this came out pretty well, especially since it's NO CHEATING -- I used to scan my pencil sketch and overlay it on the original photo in photoshop to find mistakes before inking it -- but her eyes are a little small, and it's more a portrait of Pearl Mackie than Bill.

(Lessee if DW will embed a small version here.)



I am going to be slightly shameless. I've had invisible chronic health problems all my life. But last Friday I got a really nasty cat bite trying to corral a lost cat (success! and it's been returned to the owners!). The bites are healing well, thanks to antibiotics and a trip to the ER, but I was told to leave them uncovered after a day or two. So I'm sporting about 10 toothy puncture marks plus an impressive bruise on my right forearm. I could hide it with long sleeves, but I'm not gonna. Colin, especially, will approve of a battlescar earned by helping a cat.

OK, enough typing. I took way too long finishing that Pearl Mackie portrait; I gotta pick up the pace.

I drive to Gallifrey One on Thursday. (DRIVE! A con I can DRIVE to instead of flying! Huzzah!)

Ok, I'm trying to juggle a personal DW, plus my gamer DW where I'm posting and illustrating an epic fanfic, plus I'm still participating a bit on Tumblr, plus I have been visiting family and dealing with health issues, plus a few hours of walking a day for Pokemon Go, plus that little thing called REAL LIFE— and I'm not good at juggling, so one blog or another keeps getting shortchanged.

BUT!

(1) BIG THING FOR WHO FANS WHICH I DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT:

who_contest, drabble and shortfic community/prompt/fanfic contest from LJ has started up again on dw, and this is great and I encourage people with any kind of writing bent to enter!

(2) Gallifrey One is less than 3 weeks away?! Wow. Almost time to pack, and my art is nowhere near finished.

(3) ART. I got in the habit at my very first con of bringing an ink portrait to be autographed instead of a photo, because I somehow felt like it expressed my appreciation better... I felt bad about actors wearing their hands out signing autographs (no, seriously, as someone with arthritis/fibro that looks like agony to me), so i wanted to make some effort at my end.

As a result, I have a whole portfolio of signed portraits of mostly classic Who actors, of which Deborah Watling is the most precious (I just wish I had been a better artist then.) The problem was, since I was self-conscious about showing the actor a BAD portrait of themselves, I got in the bad habit ofscanning my pencil sketch, overlaying it on the reference photo in Photoshop in order to find mistakes, and correcting them. I'd repeat this process until the pencil sketch was pretty damn close. at which ponit i'd ink it. But in a way that was tracing.

Faces are so so hard. Artists who make it look easy have mostly spent years and years and YEARS of practice making them look good.

So anyway. WIP, Peal Mackie. I've worked on it in two 1-hour-or-so shifts so far, and it's still not quite right.



i need to set it aside again and come back later to see what looks off. But it's all ME eyeballing it now, now, with no cheats. My only tools are a plumb line to compare edges of curves and negative space, and a stick to check proportions (some artists use a thumb for that; for me a wooden coffee stirrer is my height-by-width checker.)

I somehow didn't realize DW had sorted out native image hosting.

Fanart of Yaz I drew during inktober (it took an hour and a bit) and colored later, because I'm danged proud of it (also I adore Yaz)

First of all: Trevor Baxter, aka Professor George Litefoot of Jago & Litefoot, passed away today.

I fell in love with the character when I was a kid.

My mother held him up as an example of truly good manners. There's a great moment in Talons of Weng-Chiang when he's sharing his table with Leela, and she picks up a joint of meat with her hands and bites into it like a barbarian. There's a split second of horror in his face, but he blinks, hides it, and instead of shaming his guest resolutely puts down his knife and fork and follows suit, picking up his own meat with his hands. Because the polite thing is to make guests feel welcome.



I don't know if that was in the script or Trevor Baxter improvving, but Litefoot was clearly very close to his heart, and he's had a ball the last nine years recording thirteen series!!! of Jago and Litefoot in his old age. Big Finish has a nice bio and tributes to him from fellow actors here.

Also, if you haven't heard it, the March Short Trip was the Tenth Doctor stopping by to visit Prof. Litefoot, and the trailer contains a truly moving clip that captures the essence of both Litefoot and the Doctor. It's quick; give a listen. It's probably the last thing Baxter ever recorded.

I drew a portrait of him (above) for my daily practice. I've been posting 1 hour sketches for about a week now, mostly Doctor Who companions.

As for the big news...

( fanart and thoughts about new Doctor )

Once again broke my rule of not checking social media at ANY time on Saturday.

Once again have encountered major, major spoilers before Amazon uploads the new Who ep.

Making last week the only ep for which I didn't have major spoilers I didn't want to have seen before it was available to me legally.

How do I hate Tumblr? let me count the ways.

AND YET, most of the fans I know are there, and I don't want to be cut off from them. Not to mention an awful lot of friends.

 So, this is the first season of new Who I've purchased on Amazon Prime, mostly to support Bill (PoC lesbian!) and because I love Gomez and Capaldi. Also, Heaven Sent was amazeballs. This season... love the characters, but I doubt I'd rewatch any eps except the first two.

Back when they let Bill be HAPPY. When she wanted to go to the future, because she wanted to see that people in the future were HAPPY. Which was such a nice fresh start to get Who out of the angst rut it sometimes falls into. But she hasn't had much fun with the Doctor so far, just dudes hitting on her so she has to say "um... lesbian".

But anyway. I listened to and wrote a detailed liveblog on Spare Parts before watching this week's new Who. And I can only say that the EU one licks the TV version hollow, to misquote Tom Baker’s Puddleglum.

I haven't been this annoyed with Who since Twin Dilemma, which is saying a lot. (Well, okay, Minuet in Hell, but that wasn't on TV. Even The Boy That Time Forgot didn't irk me this much.) 


Let's see.

( Why I disliked World Enough and Time (spoilers) )

I'm just... tired.Which is a pity, because Capaldi and Gomez finally had me hooked last year, and at the moment I’m having to force myself to keep watching.

Then again, that means more time to listen to great Who stories that very seldom let me down. I've got a backlog to get through, after all!

It is flipping done. 52K words, two years of my life, too many sinus infections, and gods know how many hours of research, revisions and nitpicky edits later…

FANFIC: The Coronation of the High Hierophant

Pairing: Fifth Doctor & Nyssa (mostly platonic except That One Demi chapter)
Rating: Teen and up
Word Count: 51K or 52K depending on archive
Context: Big Finish audios but as usual I provide enough context you don't need 'em

“Those people are gravely mistaken who imagine that all this is mere ceremony.” —Louis XIV, Le Roi-Soleil

Story: On a human colony where Baroque France and classical Rome are so far in Earth’s legendary past that both are mined for “wisdom of the ancients,” the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa are swept into a fantastic world of pageantry, allegory, advanced gravitational engineering, dance and court intrigue.

The Doctor believes Nyssa has found true love. Nyssa believes she has found someone who needs their help. After the Doctor leaves Nyssa to her new life, she’s forced to embrace the masquerade far more deeply than she had intended. Will the Doctor defy the Web of Time to extricate her from the jaws of history?

Tags: trope subversion · graysexuality · queer characters · trans characters

Somehow I hadn't gotten around to reading a rollercoaster Team Five fanfic, Serenity's Shadow, set on the one world in the Traken Union that wasn't wiped out during Logopolis. (Mentioned in Cold Fusion.) Author is Chryse on Teaspoon. Alas, she's only written this one novella-length epic.

It's Adric, Tegan, the Doctor and Nyssa. They all have moments to be great, and they're in character. Everything's really well-written, there's lots of canon tie-ins (but you don't need to know them to enjoy the story), tons of classic Who melodrama and cliffhangers and cultural factions and scheming and big scary moments and angst. 

I wish I could write this well.

At any rate, if you liked early 80s Who or anyone in this TARDIS team, very much worth a read.

...It's been a bumper crop year for Team Five fans.

I'm ambivalent about bringing Adric back, because Matthew's a little rusty (although he was great in last year's Short Trip "A Full Life"), and because I prefer S20 Nyssa who's more experienced and outspoken. The Star Men and Zaltys were fun but not stellar stories (pun intended), The Contingency Club was the only one I felt measured up to Big Finish's usual standards of "classic Who, only with really good scriptwriting, and all the companions have moments to shine.")

But some years we just have to be content with a classic Doctor's trilogy. This year? There's SO MUCH MORE. Last year we had an extra anthology with Turlough. This year is the gift that keeps on giving. Alien Heart / Dalek Soul was flipping brilliant and original, almost as much so as Heaven Sent— the first story is just setup for the second, but the second had me yelling expletives at three different points. So we had two good to great Nyssa & Five stories, which of course makes me happy. And we're not done with Five yet this year. 

September gives us TWO more treats.

"A Heart on Both Sides." Short Trip with older!Nyssa — post-Terminus Space Medic Nyssa, saving lives and being Wonder Woman, encountering the Eighth Doctor at the beginning of the Time War.



I've always wondered what older!Nyssa would say/do if she learned of the Time War, since her own experiences with Time Lords other than the Doctor have been largely negative, yet she's so loyal to the Doctor. On the one hand, she'd sympathize with his predicament — she's watched the Time Lords execute him, for goodness' sake, not to mention her personal tragedies with the Master— but on the other hand, she's a healer and a doctor, medical variety, and she'll be not best pleased if she find the Doctor connected with a war that's sending casualties her way. I've wanted her to confront one of the post-Time-War Doctors for years (as the Last of Her Race, she has an additional angle they can't do here). But Eight will do.

My only regret is that it's a Short Trip, so single-narrator, rather than Sarah and Paul working together. Both of them can project quiet passion and intensity, and Nyssa only gets angry very rarely, so it would be a hell of a confrontation for them to act. On the other hand, Short Trips have the advantage of letting us see the Doctor through the companion's eyes, and Nyssa's nonhuman, "very old friend of the Doctor with a life outside of his" perspective is somewhat unique.

There's an Adric Short Trip in November, "The Ingenous Gentleman Adric of Alzarius." The description on their website suggests another panto. It could be a hilarious spoof, IF Matthew is up to the challenge. A big if. (Except personally I don't ship Adric/Nyssa, and reading between the lines there may be a bit of it, but we shall see. Can't very well begrudge Big Finish feeding other people's ships after what they did for mine in Dalek Soul.) I'm looking forward to the "Dragon" in that story. ;) 

But here. Here is the story that had me squeaking for joy as soon as Janet posted something about being at the studio with Lou Jameson. Main Range Fifth Doctor audio: Time in Office. TEGAN AND LEELA and a political drama (anthology?) about the Fifth Doctor getting dragged back to Gallifrey and forced to serve at least a little time as the president. Tegan. And. LEELA. teamed up. Five, you are in so much trouble.



[Full-sized version]

This cover art is already gorgeous, some of the best Big Finish has produced (including the stained glass Dalek). But what's that we see at the bottom of the scene, for the dedicated classic Who connoisseur? "A few bare rocks with some weeds sprouting from them and some pathetic little patches of sludgy snow." — The Time Monster