Happy Birthday J.R.R Tolkien

Today is J.R.R Tolkien's birthday and in his honor I made a toned paper drawing of Fingolfin from the Silmarillion. Fingolfin faced off with Morgoth and was the second high king of the Noldor. Tolkien's books have been a huge influence on my childhood and now my adulthood.

As a kid, I always wondered who J.R.R Tolkien was because he was often mentioned with Narnia creator C.S. Lewis. In sixth grade, my mom purchased me a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring. I carried it to school everyday and it took me all year to read the book (that was clearly above my reading level). Also in sixth grade I did a report on J.R.R Tolkien for my English class. The next year in my English class I did a book report of The Hobbit. I created an illuminated book of the scenes and characters of the book (which ended up inspiring my thesis). In High school, I continued to read Tolkien's works of the Last Tales and other texts. Many of the characters and creatures were drawn in my sketch book while sitting in class. 

In college, Tolkien no doubt was inspired my work. I focussed on character design and fantasy illustration. I did an independent study of watercolors for the Hobbit. And created two digital illustrations in another independent study for my final semester. And I am still continuing to sketch new illustrations for Middle Earth. It's hard for me to think of what direction my work and life would be like with out reading Tolkien. 

Monster Monday- July 15, 2013

Taking a break from a post about the Legendary Monsters. This week is full of creatures who fill my sketchbook. Keeping a sketchbook is important for me to brew ideas and designs, so I thought I would share sketches done in the past 2 months.

These little guys are going to be used for a series of chapter headers. It shows how the leaf sprite changes with each season, not just physically but emotionally as well. (i really like the little sassy sprite)

The left side of the sketchbook has some fish monsters that I designed to be used in a character spot illustration for a role playing game manual. The right side are designs of dragons, one thing I know that I should be able to draw better are dragons. After all they are important in my books and video games. 

I show spreads of my sketchbooks to show that not every page is filled. Sometimes just to get a fresh feelings, I'll hop to another page. The right side is covered in lumpy, weird mushroom creatures. These guys mumble to themselves as they run around stealing real mushrooms.

More designs of forrest sprites. The orb was to glow at night and guide the lost out of the forrest and back to civilization. The other page was my first attempts are Ice Giants, I have more pages that explore the idea as well as compositions for the watercolor I completed a few weeks ago.

The Imp designs on the spread are being used for a watercolor of a thieving imp sitting on a wooden beam. It's another illustration that I can be seen used in role playing games, more for a written adventure. The Imp steals a valuable necklace of importance and its the adventures task to return it.

These are designs for the Irish Phooka, a known changling, that takes the shape of small animals like goats and cats. I used the animals as reference to make the phooka more animalistic. 

I've been drawing my version of high fantasy elves for a while and haven't used any of the designs in an illustration. Here is the costuming and armor for an archmage high elf character for a role playing game character profile. The next page is my idea of how a explorer might catch smaller creatures of the wild. Many will-o-wisps trapped in jars, they kind of look like little ghosts.

And finally, basic rock elementals. I made it different from every other elemental using ruins to enchant the rock into an humanistic form. He has a strong body structure and cracked rocks of billowing smoke.

Thanks for checking out all of my sketches. I'll be posting one of these images a day of my tumblr.

Elf Knight

I have many paintings lined up for the next few weeks and wanted to get some of the pieces that are close to done finished. Here is a little practice piece I started a few weeks back at school. Elf armor found it's way into my sketch book after I created a ink drawing for my friend Ginette's birthday. As I have stated before, I don't draw elves often, so it was a nice change. The elf knight was great practice for the larger pieces that I have planned to be working on in the next few weeks. I have a goblin assassin piece and I need to finish The Green Man as well. Plenty to keep busy as I continue the search for a part time summer job.

Elf Lord

For my roommate's birthday I wanted to draw her something really cool. We are both huge Tolkien admirers, Ginette is an elf person, I am a dwarf person, and Claire likes people (most importantly Rohan, as Jared said 'it takes Lord of the Rings to get Claire to say she likes people). 

So I broke out the sketch book to throw some ideas down. I don't draw elves very often so I had to find designs that I liked, I prefer stronger looking characters so I gave the elf lord a strong jaw line and cheek bones. Around the portrait of the Elf Lord, I wanted to create a frame, something I have not experimented with. Art Nouveu reference was used, but I tried to put my own twist on it. And is definitely something I want to continue experimenting with.

After filling 2 pages of my sketchbook, I pulled out some illustration board and got sketching. It took a while to draw because of the frame, I wanted to make sure I was happy with the design before I inked the image. Got my trusty FW ink and brush and inked the Elf Lord creating the final image