Silver Queen with colour! I’ve already gone on about Celebrian in detail. When it came time to colour her I googled what her official description was and found out she maybe had silver hair? Maybe? I decided to give her darker skin and golden brown eyes, reminiscent of the golden leaves of the Mallorn trees of Lothlorien. Her hair, I did keep silver and I had hoped to make it sort of metallic looking? Purple is a colour I associate with Elrond and the pendant is one he gave her. Her headdress is supposed to hint at butterflies.
Omg. I discovered the colour mixer/blending brush! Where have you been all of my life? I’m still hella clumsy with it but I like what I’ve seen so far! Coloured in Photoshop.
The most unrealistic thing about The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings is never ONCE do we see some long-haired dude or lady tie their hair back when shit gets real.
Edit: I can’t even code without tying my hair back!
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!
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
Flower Crown. Elrond is just as comfortable in a flower crown as he is one made of metal. But who made him this one? Was the keeper of his passion, his wife? A hobbit he considers a dear friend? Or perhaps Galadriel is visiting and she made it for him; a whimsical gift that reminds her of her daughter and amuses her grandchildren?
Or perhaps this is a younger Elrond, still Gil-Galad’s herald, who was gifted this flower crown by a talented Silvan elf, Thranduil son of Oropher who wished to give a token to the young half-elf he’d met briefly in Doriath before its fall?
Or maybe Elrond made it himself because it pleased him to do so and he enjoys seeing Rivendell’s residents smile when they see him and hurry off to make crowns of their own.
This started off as a sketch, pencil on paper. I scanned it and inked it in photoshop. At first, it was only his head and a bit of his collar that I’d drawn. Then I decided to get brave and I digitally drew his robes and flower crown! I’m really more of an illustrator than a painter but I had fun blooping colours then refining the bloops into flowers and clothes!
BONUS CONTENT! I realized I had screenshots of my progress on this pic because I was spamming a friend with them in chat… so I made a gif!
Warm Hobbit. Someone gave Bilbo a dwarf sweater and he’s very pleased with it! He must have been cold. Maybe he if he washes it in warm water it will shrink a little bit? Maybe Dis made it for him?I like to think it’s one of Thorin’s old sweaters that he doesn’t like to wear much.
Inked with pigment liners on photocopy paper. XD Coloured in Photoshop.
Hi! A possible suggestion for Teeny Tiny: Bilbo giving Thorin an earful of hobbit sass. :-)
Hobbit sass is my favourite type of sass! I mean, Thorin’s a bit… well, Bilbo’s just so… cute? It’s hard to take him seriously when he gets all worked up like this! But because Thorin is a good king he tries his best to take Bilbo seriously.
Shadow Hobbit. So I’ve been playing Breath of the Wild and the moment I saw a Kakariko villager I knew I would be drawing Bilbo as a Sheikah.
“Have you heard the legend of the "Shadow Folk”? They are the Sheikah…the shadows of the Hylians. They say they swore allegiance to the King of Hyrule and guarded the Royal Family…“— Shikashi
Ahhh! I am in love with the idea of hobbits being Sheikah, the quiet ninja/guardians that go about their daily lives being all agrarian but have a secret history of guarding royal families.
Bilbo may not look like much but he’s one of the sneakier Sheikah and definitely the sort of fellow you’d want on your adventure to reclaim Hyrule Erebor from Calamity Smaug.
He can also cook up amazing dishes to help protect your party!
Everywhere I look I see Hobbit AUs! I guess that’s my thing? *looks back over the posts made this year* Yup. Definitely a thing I like to do. The process of making this was routine/boring. Pencil, scan, ink and colour in Photoshop. I need to change it up or something.
Hobbit. Hockey. Okay, but hear me out. Instead of fighting battles with swords and stuff, the major players in Middle Earth settle scores with hockey! Feanor and his sons (The Feanorean Furies???) were the first winners of the Simaril Cup but it was lost when they were defeated the next season by the Melkor Maia. (idk! I’ve just begun to scratch the surface of The Silmarillion!) They swore they’d get the cup back but, yeah, nope. Never happened.
Currently the biggest teams are:
The Erebor Ravens, Mirkwood Elks, Rivendell River Falls, and the Iron Hills War Boars. The cities of Men rarely rank in the Simaril Cup Playoffs and often the best referees are men!
Hobbits, alas, do not play ice hockey as it would require wearing ice skates but you should see them play field hockey. They play dirty.
Pretty obviously this is pencil on paper. Not even a very special pencil except that it’s a pure black ninja pencil! Instead of using a pigment liner to ink this, I might dig out my old nibs/brushes, see if I have any inkwells that haven’t dried up and dig deep to remember how to ink without splattering myself. XD Oh yeah, because I used paper with a bit of tooth this nib experiment is likely going to be a bit splattery. Doh!
