Number one annoyance about writing fic with Bard?
Although, Brad the Bowman sounds like the douchier version of Bard! XD
Number one annoyance about writing fic with Bard?
Although, Brad the Bowman sounds like the douchier version of Bard! XD
Fancy Shoes. So I’m switching up my Thursdays in August and I’m posting old art for #TBT! (Can you tell I have another vacation coming up?) I had been searching for the comic plates and character studies I’d done for a LOTR comic anthology ages ago but I ran across this piece and decided to go with it!
This is an illustration I did to accompany a story I wrote… ten years ago! If you can’t tell (ahaha) I was going through a Beardsley phase. It was inked with India Ink and nibs on Paris Bleedproof paper and you know what? Quality materials make a difference! I dug this out of my big box of old art and neither the paper nor the ink had changed colour or faded! That’s some archival quality stuff!
More Hobbit art and fics are coming! I hope you don’t mind my doing this TBT thing once in a while.
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.
Dwalin’s Kids. Every spring Thorin goes up to the pastures to inspect the new kids born to the goat herds. It’s not necessary, really, but when he does his royal inspection he always makes sure his captain of the guard accompanies him.
Dwalin grumbles about how it takes so long to get up to the pastures then he grumbles about how long Thorin always takes and must they look in every pen? And talk to every goatherd? Who cares how much the goats ate over the winter?
He generally makes a pest of himself until Thorin dismisses him for the remainder of his inspection which is when, Dwalin the big mean captain of the guard, makes a beeline for the nursery where he’ll spend hours feeding the new kids and laughing at their antics.
Thorin says nothing of their little ritual or about how happy and relaxed Dwalin is for days afterwards.
He does, however, draw the line at Dwalin keeping goats in his chambers. Which hasn’t come up… yet.. but Thorin has prepared arguments just in case.
I have such a soft spot for big gruff dwarves who have tender moments with animals! Especially baby animals! My headcanon Thorin is 10-ply soft towards his favourite ravens and when he gets kittens? Oh forget about it. He’s putty in their paws. I don’t know if it’s obvious but the kid on the left is trying to launch itself off of Dwalin’s back and there is another kid in his arms being bottle-fed. Pentel 0.3mm mechanical pencil on Paris Bleedproof paper. If i were to try to take this picture further, I’d finish it off with a regular HB pencil before scanning it.
Prizewinners. You do not get prize-winning tomatoes by being soft on bulbasaurs! It is best, if you get one of those huge pests in your garden, to take a broom to it’s backside and gently, but firmly, shoo it away.
If you do not immediately do this, a single bulbasaur can strip every tomato off of your tomato vines in less than ten minutes! They’ll even eat the vines if you are not careful! Such pests!
Thankfully they’re fairly docile creatures and they don’t much like straying into town. But every now and again you’ll get a young one who is curious about the taste of tomatoes!
They seem to especially like Bag End. Or Bilbo. Of course, no self-respecting hobbit would be caught training a pokémon! Hobbit life had no room for battling and training and there certainly wasn’t much room in a hobbit hole for a pokémon!
Thranduil and his Fairy-types
Thorin and his Growlithe
Has this obsession with mashing together Pokémon Go and The Hobbit ended with this pic? [Spoiler alert: probably not] I think I need to try a new Photoshop brush. Not quite liking this one. What I really need to do is write down the brushes I’ve use so I can find the one I want again! XD
The Laughter reached out, her hands grasping at empty air. She looked like she wanted to run towards Nemesis but was too afraid to move. “You’re… you’re back, you’re alive. Love, is that really you?”
“If you have half the sense I credit you with, you’ll abandon this project here and now. Blame me, if you like! Tell them I tricked you! I’ll make the pillars into ice that will melt and fracture! Anything would be better than this, even darkness.”
His friend wasn’t as big as he was and, after the past few weeks, he likely didn’t have the strength, either. Of course, Dwalin knew that Thorin would rather die than complain but he also knew Thorin would rather die than complain. You had to force Thorin to look after himself.
The Ugly Princeling. I was looking through my photos the other day and came across a photo of myself at age 11. I was a hideous troll-child! XD It’s a pretty funny picture that captured that awkward time of a child’s life when puberty has started to rear its ugly head and some parts of you are adult and some parts are still a child and you just look awkward af.
Then I thought about Thorin and how awkward he might’ve looked and I decided to draw that. XD Eventually he grows into his nose, his adult teeth stop looking so huge and awkward in his too-small mouth, his ears don’t stick out quite so much and his childish facial hair becomes more majestic.
Also, he stops letting his mom dress him.
This is from an AU where Thorin’s angry outbursts as a child was a source of constant worry for his parents. They sent away for Dwalin, a cousin, to come be Thorin’s companion/friend to see if that would help soothe Thorin’s temper.
Dwalin’s outfit includes a ‘modified’ dwarf-sweater! he cut off the sleeves and ribbed neckline and cut a V in it. He was already a little badass as a tween. XD He started maturing earlier than Thorin so he’s taller/bigger than his cousin. (Thorin sulked SO HARD when he realized his younger cousin was speeding past him into adulthood!)
Of course, what Thorin’s parents didn’t count on was… Thorin being able to talk Dwalin into all sorts of mischief and rule-breaking. And vice versa.
There’s proportion issues happening here. Dwarves are so hard to draw, sometimes, and tween dwarves even more so! But, overall, I’m happy with how this came out and I like the feel of the pic Really, just getting to draw Thorin in romper-shorts was hilarious fun! I drew this with a 0.3mm Pentel mechanical pencil then finished it off with a regular HB pencil. Drawn on Paris Bleedproof paper. It seems that no matter how large a piece of paper I use, I always end up running off of the edge!
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!
Thranduil’s fairy-types help keep Mirkwood enchanted and they often will fool travellers and confuse them so they don’t penetrate as deep as Thranduil’s fortress.
It is the presence of so many fairy-type pokémon, who are resistant to both bug-type and dark-type attacks, that has slowed down the spread of darkness from Dol Guldur into Mirkwood but, alas, fairy-types are not very strong or fierce and they have been unable to stop the spread entirely.
Elves do not use pokéballs. They have more than enough time and patience to train pokémon without restraining them. Since the end of the Second Age it has become very unfashionable to battle with pokémon among elves and, instead, they have been treated as allies/treasured companions who choose to fight alongside their elf trainers.
I went a little extra with the sparkles and sunbeams on this one. I figure Thranduil knows how to lounge on moss-covered boulders and still diva it up when posing for a picture. XD The pokémon from left to right: wigglytuff, snubbull, cleffa, igglybuff! There was a lot more detail I could have put into this, especially the colours and depths of shadows etc. but at some point I have to put the tablet down and just post it. Inked and coloured with Photoshop using Kyle’s Inbox - Badass Brush Inker 2 brush.
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.
Growlithe! I choose you! Yeah I’m not anywhere near done with the whole Pokémon/Hobbit thing! XD Sure, Thorin probably should have an Arcanine but he’s a very patient trainer and took his time finding the right pokémon to train up. I also imagine he was resistant to taking on a pokémon… he has so many other responsibilities and he might have been afraid he couldn’t give a pokémon the sort of attention it requires.
Finally, after the urging of friends and family, he gave in and he’s never been happier! Frankly, I think he picked a growlithe because it’s mohawk and loyalty and fierceness reminds him of Dwalin. XD
I tried out a new brush but I’m not 100% sure I’m digging it. I’ll try it out on a couple more pictures but I think I haven’t found my forever brush yet.Hm. I feel like the pokéball should’ve looked more dwarfish. Instead I drew it by referring to Pokémon Go. I feel like in Middle Earth they might not even have pokéballs! Oh well! next picture won’t have a pokéball in it!