It was back in 2023 that Candy Jar Books first released a hardback collection of the commercial work of occasional Doctor Who cover artist, Jeff Cummins; The Invisible Artist was a slick A4-sized release printed on quality paper and surprised with the sheer range and breadth of the illustrative work this self-depreciating artist has covered in his lifetime – from musical legends like Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney, and The Moody Blues, to fads like the kung fu craze of the late 1970s. Part gallery, part biographical journey, this proved itself a quality release that astonished with its showcasing of what was and still is an “Invisible Artist.” But a brilliant one at that.
That book is still available from Candy Jar, in affordable paperback if you prefer, but off the back of that release came the announcement of a second Jeff Cummins tome, this time focusing purely on the man’s Doctor Who output.
But… Cummins didn’t actually produce much work for Doctor Who. Did he?
That’s the misconception at work in titling himself “The Invisible Artist” — because what this new release goes to show is a very striking and long history with Doctor Who that goes back to his childhood in 1963. And it comes fully to the fore in his professional life in the 1970s, with Target Books, and Doctor Who Discovers. But it continues to the present day with some stunning private commissions from fans, which include breath-taking pencil drawings of Jon Pertwee (Third Doctor), Tom Baker (Fourth Doctor), and a particularly stunning Jodie Whittaker (Thirteenth Doctor) portrait!
It’s the particular choice in format and design here from Candy Jar that really makes this special Doctor Who gallery release of Jeff Cummins’ work have significant impact on the reader, however — the previous book was a standard A4 size, whereas this is half of that, at a square 8×8″. This means that the reproduction size is reduced, the layout of the pages becomes more confined, but all of this is to the absolute benefit of the artwork represented as what tends not to be well known is that a lot of Cummins’ original art and paintings were actually done at a very reduced size anyway — often as little as 4×6″! And so this means that when one of these two books from Candy Jar is compared to the other, this new collection gives a very noticeably sharper and more colourful reproduction than what the previous book release gave us.
The importance being that the painted cover-work for Cummins’ The Face of Evil and The Talons of Weng-Chiang is an incredible high-definition in quality, while the pencil drawings towards the end of the book have all the inks and shading perfectly reproduced from the original artist paper; there is none of the stretch and hazing to the reproduced pieces that was in evidence in the previous collection from a few years ago…
Featuring photographs of various displays of the artist’s work in recent years, and a full biography and reminiscence of his career in the art and commercial worlds, this impressively laid-out gallery book is a superbly produced labour of love from all involved.
