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Col
Co-Lord President
United Kingdom
4336 Posts |
 Posted - 30 Aug 2007 : 02:39:46
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My recollection of the first cover I did for the
Target Books Doctor Who range, "The Rescue" was that
after my first submission was turned down ( looking
back on that I can see why, it is very bland ), I
submitted another idea, and that was accepted. I don't
remember ever being commissioned to do it.
The next ( the second and last for Target ) cover was
for "The Space Pirates".
Again I had submitted an idea ( a montage with Craven
and a couple of the spaceships I think ), but it was
at a Doctor Who Convention in Coventry that Alistair
Pearson was on stage and was asked if he was doing the
cover ( at that time, bar the David Whittaker Dalek
stories and Douglas Adams scripts, all but two stories
were due to see print ).
I was surprised to hear him say that Tony Clark was
doing the cover for "The Space Pirates", so I 'phoned
Peter Darvell-Evans on Monday after the Convention.
Peter didn't want to use the cover I had submitted,
but would like me to do a new one and it was needed
the following week !
I seem to remember spending 3 days faxing pencil
sketch ideas to Peter ( I was quite busy at work too
at the time ), and painted the cover over a couple of
evenings or maybe the weekend.
The pose of the Space Pirate was taken from a photo of
Tom Selleck in the sci-fi film "Runaway" that I
spotted in Starburst. I wanted a Bond-like pose.
To have used Troughton's face would have required
artwork approval, and there was no time for that.
They had Fraser Hines permission to use his likeness,
but I didn't think Jamie had a lot to do in that
story.
I delivering the cover early in the morning before
going to work and I'm sure W H Allen had moved offices
around this time too ( somewhere close to the
Clerkenwell area of London if I remember right ), it
was a different place to their office where I
delivered "The Rescue" ( somewhere near Park Lane I
think ).
I quite liked the art at the time, I thought it got
away from the usual Doctor Who covers of that era.
I'm not too keen on it now.
The Rescue was painted with Gouache paint and The
Space Pirates mostly in Acrylic as I had experimented
with acrylic after Andrew Skilleter told me how much
better he thought acrylics were than gouache.
The Rescue art was a little bigger than A4 and The
Space Pirates about A3 size. I did it bigger as I
thought with the lack of time to paint it and then
reducing the art to the size of the cover, would make
the art look better !
The Doctor's head on The rescue was painted on a piece
of paper and stuck to the cover, it had fallen off by
time I picked it up from W H Allen some time later.
It was painted on paper because I hadn't masked the
area where the Doctor's head was going to be painted,
and the green airbrushed paint would mix with the
flesh colour of the Doctor's head ( one of the
disadvantages of gouache paint).
There was no attempt by W H Allen to return the work,
it was just shoved in a draw, I just happened to ask
for it back.
Tony Clark.
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 When you have seen the ages i have seen.................... |
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