watercolor/ink/gouache
For anyone who doesn't know, Pigbin Josh is a minor comic relief character from the 1971 Doctor Who story The Claws of Axos. He is a mentally handicapped scrap collector who encounters a crashed spaceship and becomes the first victim of the Axons.
I first became interested in painting him when I realized that without the comedic music and nonsensical muttering he's really quite a sad character.
The terrible weather and desolate slate piles of Dungeness provide an incredibly dreary backdrop for Josh's brief story.
It's no surprise that this series of paintings are consistently my least popular work. Am I dragging Doctor Who fan art, kicking and screaming, in a new direction or just being silly?
Probably a little of both.
I love your Pigbin Josh series; but maybe I-m being silly too. I like silly, silly is good.
ReplyDeleteIts great that you've zeroed in on Pigbin Josh. We could all end up at the bottom of the ladder given the wrong series of circumstances. The images are haunting. I work in the mental health field and I wonder if Pigbin Josh was actually meant as comic relief, I very much doubt that they were. I'm pretty sure that Bob baker, Dave Martin, Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts would have been sympathetic to this character and that in a way they were embedding a lesson in life to the children. In this case I can't say what that lesson was but there was a kind of respect paid to Pigbin Joshs sad story.
ReplyDeleteI love Pigbin Josh. You've added much pathos to his story.
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