The Moth Crown. I have a real weakness for Thorinduil. Call it a hateship if you like but there’s something about royal hotheads clashing that does it for me! Maybe all that fighting makes the gifts and soft words later all the more sweet? This was a warm-up sketch of Thranduil wearing a crown and ring Thorin made for him. The crown is supposed to be Thorin’s interpretation of a moth. Set with big cabochon-cut jewels.
Random HB pencil on photocopy paper. Haha! Favourite erasers? My clicky Sanford Tuff Stuff ™ Eraser Stick, a Pentel hi-polymer eraser, and the nubby end of a pencil. Because this was a warm-up sketch the point of it isn’t to erase but to let the lines do what they please but I still couldn’t resist cleaning up a bit.
Happy Birthday to me! In the fine Hobbity tradition, I drew a gift for someone else on my birthday! This is dedicated to my dear friend, @forestofstarlight, who got me into The Hobbit! I’ve been wanting to draw Thranduil draped in jewels and furs for her for ages!
In my mind, this is 100% Thorinduil.
I wanted to show a blending of elf and dwarf aesthetics. Thorin and Thranduil may be antagonistic grumpy assholes but I am in lurve with the idea that, despite all of that, they not only find each other aesthetically pleasing but that there is a deeper connection that no amount of screaming matches, stomping off in a huff, and prolonged sulks can erode.
I love the idea of Thranduil being Thorin’s muse; he goes back to jewellry making because he’s a perfectionist and he wants Thranduil to wear HIS designs. Thranduil would try to refine Thorin’s style. Thorin cares about how he looks but he’d pretend he didn’t just to annoy Thranduil and get him to sigh and roll his eyes. He’d insist on dwarven-made everything until the first time Thranduil wrassles him into some fine, Mirkwood silk… then, slowly but surely (THRANDUIL CAN WAIT! A HUNDRED YEARS IS A BLINK TO AN ELF!) more and more elf-influenced pieces would make their way into Thorin’s wardrobe. Give it a couple of decades and you’ll find Thorin and Thranduil looking regal and unique in a blend of dwarf and elf aesthetics.
Some of this piece is still doodley but that’s because this is still a sketch! I’m also not terribly sure I like Thranduil looking so… doe-eyed? Maybe he’s trying to be seductive? XD I usually see him as more masculine than he appears here.
Soooo, this one is much closer to my original illustration style but it is hella time-consuming! I used both a regular HB pencil and a 0.3mm Pentel mechanical pencil. (Which I recently purchased to replace my ancient 0.3mm Staedtler pencil. It died. It died sooo hard.) I usually enjoy drawing curls but those braids were so much fun to figure out and draw I cannot lament the lack of curls in this pic. There’s a whole bunch of tweaking that needs to happen before I can ink this but I’m happy where it is for a sketch!
Hoarding and Chasing. Thranduil and a small sample of his hoard of fairy-type pokémon! They help him keep Mirkwood enchanted and confuse unsanctioned visitors. He lets them run loose wherever they please and often he finds the smallest of them like to be near him at all times.
Bilbo, and most hobbits, on the other hand don’t really care much for keeping pokémon. Or maybe it’s just that Bilbo doesn’t like it when bulbasaurs eat his prize tomatoes! Shoo! Shoo you naughty thing!
Not going to lie, I’m really looking forward to colouring the Thranduil picture; there’s going to be so much PINK! What I’ve posted here is only half of the Thranduil picture.
I’m sort of meh about how I’ve drawn Bilbo but the bulbasaur I’m rather proud of. When I go to ink that picture I’ll likely adjust the Bilbo lineart.
His Royal Majesty, Silver King of Ice, Captain Thranduil of the Mirkwood Elves! (He was a former figure skater but if you try to chirp at him about it you’ll get a hip check that’ll send you flying into the stands! He and Thorin have been in a few donnybrooks and when those two face off on the ice you know somebody is going to end up in the penalty box!)
He may look like you can knock him off his feet but don’t let his lean looks fool you; Thranduil’s a bit of a goon! Especially if Thorin’s on the ice… He’s pretty hot-headed for someone who looks so icy and he’s willing to ditch his gloves and get into a donnybrook at a moment’s notice!
Ugh. I am terrible at using a tablet to draw directly into my computer. I did this one old-school with pencil on paper, inked with Staedtler pigment liners (0.3 is my favourite size to work with), erase all of the pencil, then scan as b/w art > 600dpi > .tif.
Photoshop with a few different brushes. IDK! It was hard to try to get that same texture on his robe that he had in the movie. I did not succeed. XD Half the fun of drawing Hobbit Hockey stuff is trying to figure out what the different uniforms would look like!
Mirkwood’s #1 Trainer. Thranduil has always liked fairy-type pokémon and filled Greenwood with all the fairy types he could find. (This may have been because fairy-types are immune to dragon-type attacks; something he’d value very much.) You can scarcely find fairy-types anywhere else but Mirkwood by the Third Age!
First off, thank you to everyone who has liked or reblogged my art this year! I started in April and posted twice a week, every week, until sometime this fall! In 2017 I created more fanart than I had done in the ten years prior! So, thank you, for encouraging me to keep going.
I couldn’t possibly include all of the art I created this year in my summary so I picked twelve of my favourite, non-sketch Hobbit pieces (and it was hard to pick!):
I’m not 100% sure what I’ll be doing for 2018 or in what fandom(s). The Hobbit was a lot of fun but my takes on the characters/subject matter didn’t seem to resonate with very many people. Or maybe there aren’t a lot of people who like AUs in The Hobbit fandom? (Considering 90% of what I create is AU… Haha Imma never stop!) Or… maybe I just need to up my art game which is totally valid! I found that after a few weeks of producing work I quickly settled into an ‘art rut’ that I never managed to break out of.
I’ll figure it out eventually but in the meantime I think I’ll be concentrating on learning new art techniques, experimenting more, and maybe posting less ‘finished’ works and more of my art struggles and sketches in 2018.
Thank you, again. I feel so accomplished and satisfied this year! I almost feel like I am a creative person, again.
Year in review template from yorunaka on Deviant Art. According to Google. XD
Thorin’s getting hitched and that means even Thranduil gets a heads up about the big event. But what is this? Two ravens have messages for the Mirkwood King? Thranduil doesn’t have enough wine for this nonsense.
This part of the series took me five-ever to write and it’s the biggest part, by far.
No finished art update today because I prioritized finishing this fic but here’s a preview of Thursday’s pic post which will be inked and coloured!
Why yes! It IS Vampire Bilbo with his little familiar, Bat Frodo! XD They are off to a Halloween party! They’re gonna bob for apples and eat cakes and tell spoooky stories about haunted turnips!
How you doin’? More for that hockey AU verse I’ve been doodling in! Before Thranduil played hockey, his father made him take up the traditionally elven sport of figure skating. (It had been all the rage in Valinor! Hockey is strictly a Middle Earth game. Probably started by the Noldor.)
Maedhros and Maglor, trying to raise Elrond and Elros ‘correctly’ by elven standards had enrolled the twins in figure skating. If Fëanor had been alive, he would’ve benched both of their butts for not pushing the boys into hockey but, by that time, Maedhros and Maglor were sick to death of their father’s #hockeylife and his obsession with winning back the Simaril Cup the boys were spared. (At least, until Elros saw his first hockey game and begged them for months until they finally relented and let them play.)
Anyhow, Elros probably wanted out of figure skating because Elrond kept flirting outrageously with Thranduil, SILVER KING OF ICE, who at the time was an arrogant (sekritly shy af), enigmatic prince with an overbearing parent’s expectations to live up to off the ice and a ticking time bomb of unrealized eros on the ice!
Elrond always had liked puzzles. >:D
Like I needed an excuse or a backstory to draw elves ice dancing?!
Drawn with a regular HB pencil on scrap copy paper. Such ignoble materials to draw immortal future lords but, hey, I feel Elrond at least would appreciate the humbleness?
Train them with love. The lurverly @tea-blitz requested another Hobbit/Pokémon crossover with hobbits as last time I drew Bilbo with hobbits, it was him chasing off a troublesome bulbasaur and she felt hobbits and Pokémon would get on! :D I wanted to draw Bilbo obviously loving and being loved by his Pokémon!
![Lament of Roses. Thorin with a tattoo of three roses. Sads under the cut.
[[MORE]]Bagginshield version: Not to be a downer, not to bring the sads, gonna talk in code here for those of us who might be sensitive just gonna say… BUT AU where three...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/b95df897a231b199595232369d91a6a0/tumblr_otxatno7He1w8eu6yo1_r1_1280.jpg)
