The White Rabbit was illustrated by Sir John Tenniel for ‘Alice’s adventures in Wonderland’ by Lewis Carroll in 1866. I absolutely love his illustrations, so this is my attempt at Sir John’s White rabbit of Hearts. I’m quite pleased with it! Drawn with Winsor & Newton Indian ink.
“Near the King was the White Rabbit with a trumpet in one hand, and a scroll of parchment in the other.“
Continue reading “The White Rabbit {Art}”
Alice in wonderland has long been one of my favourite things in the world so continuing my experimenting with water colours to try and bring more green and nature inside in the winter and combining my love of all things green with my love of calligraphy and quotes, they don’t take long to do, but look really effective against a white wall – my funny little brain likes to pretend its alchemy!
Its happened, its autumn – although I feel like we skipped my favourite season and have gone straight to winter, its so cold!
But I’ve been out in the wild to photograph the change in nature and I took this with me.
The unexpectedly small tea party. Created using paper, unsurprisingly this took longer than expected. Its made to be about the same size as dollhouse furniture (I think its 1/12 scale) and then I covered some dollhouse dishes. I made it years ago and found it recently, can’t believe its still holding together!
I made this when I was a Uni as a part of my finals as part of an Alice in Wonderland project. It’s not using actual book pages (I could never destroy a book like that!) but is from photocopies from a book. The paper was then rolled or lined with card to help it keep its shape.
Alice in Wonderland is a big part of my life and I have an awful lot of art to go with it!
Wishing you a spooktacular Halloween wherever you may be I thought the Game Of Thrones quote seemed apt for the occasion.
Well this is it, the last post for Tolkientober 2021.
Day 30 was a rest day, thankfully as it had been everyday for about ten days!
Day 31: Home, so I’ve done a quick little watercolour style Hobbiton on photoshop. I’m really happy with how this turned out.
Day 29: Tears – So I focused on the tears of Arwen Undomiel. I then overlaid the Gandalf quote from ROTK.
“Well, here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth,” Gandalf says to the gathered companions. “Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.” And this, especially now, is what we need to remind ourselves: that not all tears are evil.”
Whoo! In the words of Frodo Baggins Its done! Below is a round up of all my efforts and you know what it doesn’t look to bad! Also I actually stuck with Tolkientober all month (meaning its the first inktober type challenge that I’ve actually finished!)
Continue reading “Tolkientober Days 29-31”
Only a few more days and Tolkientober 2021 will be finished!
Day 27: Hope – I actually created two pieces for this theme for the first tried to illustrate the beacons of Gondor, as Gandalf says in Return Of The King “Hope is kindled.” and the second I chose another Gandalf quote ‘All we have to decide what to do with the time that is given to us’
Day 28: Battle -I actually really struggled with this one, there are so many amazing battles in LOTR but I couldn’t pick one, in the end I settled on Gandalf facing down the Balrog, because its such an iconic good vs evil battle.
There’s only two more Tolkientober based posts left!
Day 24: Kingdoms – So I chose the kingdom of Erebor from The Hobbit. Not gonna lie this reminds me of the Starbucks logo!
Day 25 was dreams, so I went with Eowyns dream (even though its Faramir’s in the book!) I’m not entirely happy with this one, but what can you do art is like that sometimes.
Éowyn: “I dreamed I saw a great wave climbing over green lands and above the hills. I stood upon the brink. It was utterly dark in the abyss before my feet. A light shone behind me, but I could not turn. I could only stand there, waiting.”
Day 26 of #tolkientober was stars, so I decided to go with A Rhyme of Lore.
On his way to Minas Tirith Gandalf mumbled to himself a Rhyme about the Downfall of Númenor.
Tall ships and tall kings
Three times three,
What brought they from the foundered land
Over the flowing sea?
Seven stars and seven stones
And one white tree.
Rhymes of Lore are small poems that refer to ancient events of history. Rhymes of Lore seem to originate from the Dúnedain of Arnor, some were known to the Hobbits who also had some Rhymes of their own. The Long List of the Ents may also be an example of Rhymes of Lore.
I’m thinking of redrawing all my calligraphy art with ink and watercolours and putting them all on my Etsy shop!
Sounds like a plan don’t it!
We’ve nearly reached the end of October already!
Day 20: Beauty – In my opinion Richard Armitage’s portrayal of Thorin Oakenshield was beautiful and this particular pice of CAD took so long and was spread over so many layers.
Day 21: Laughter – I always giggle at the thought that the Nazgul were invisible.
Day 22: The Road – I used that literally and put the road within the letter ‘O’
I really prefer the simple pieces I’ve created for this.
Wow! I cant believe its already time for Day 19 Tolkientober is flying by so quickly.
Day 17: Hands – Now I’m not particularly good at drawing hands so this one was a little challenging but I’m actually quite pleased with it!
Day 18: Party – I love the iconic ‘no admittance’ sign in The Lord Of The Rings.
Continuing to post as many of my offerings for #tolkientober so that I can actually finish posting them on the 31st. Day 19 was eyes, so I did a quick pen and pencil drawing of Smaug’s eye (it was actually for the eye challenge for DeviantArt).
Nearly half way with Tolkientober already!
Day 12: Magic – I really love quote art! Its so simple to do but so effective and takes almost no time at all when created using CAD.
Day 13: History – So day thirteen is history. I made my own version of the Arkenstone from The Hobbit movies, by finding a fairly biggish smooth stone and painted with a whole pot of glitter nail varnish!
Day 14: – Quest, so I did a quick pen and pencil drawing of Thorin’s map from The Hobbit.
This weeks theme is leaves and nature and greenery, I’ve sat and embroidered a little sampler of leaf designs, not sure when they’ll come in handy but you never know and it looks quite pretty.
The sampler itself only took an hour or so to finish. The hoop its in is six inches across and sewn in variously sized stitches, Its all sewn free hand using coloured cotton floss at a time onto a natural (and excitingly) eco friendly, recycled calico!
I’ve also been experimenting with watercolours and my set of Arteza brush pens to try and bring more green and nature inside for the winter, they don’t take long to do, but look really effective against a white wall – my funny little brain likes to pretend its alchemy!
I’ve always thought that yellow was my favourite colour, but at the moment a lot of my art is green.
Days nine through eleven for Tolkientober 2021
Day 9 was a rest day! It feels a lot less challenging with the included rest days.
Day 10: Healing – ‘The hands of the King are the hands of a healer and so shall the rightful King be known’ is a quote from Return of the King (Book) and is about Aragorn
Day 11: Fellowship – I decided to recreate the simple but iconic image of the fellowship of the ring leaving Rivendell. and beginning the journey across Middle Earth.
Here’s a few more days for Tolkientober.
Day 6: Food – As food was the theme I thought I create the unexpectedly small hobbit tea party, unsurprisingly this took longer than expected.
Day 7: Songs – Just a quick little calligraphy art. The Road Goes Ever On, is a walking song by J.R.R. Tolkien, fictionally written by Bilbo Baggins; lyrics from The Hobbit are –
Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.
Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green
And trees and hills they long have known.
It’s one of my favourites. I’ve made quite a lot of LotR/Hobbit art over the last year, which is cool when you think that the Fellowship of the Ring is twenty this year.
Day 8: Swords A quick pen and pencil of Bilbo’s (and then Frodo’s) sword Sting.
So this year I decide to try and partake in Tolkientober on twitter and create a piece of art each day relating to the set theme. I know I won’t be able to complete all the challenges but I’m going to try my best to keep up!
Day 1: Ring – This is a wire ring I made, if I had to design a ring of power it would look like this, the wire is only craft jewellery wire but I love how it sort of looks a little viking/medieval.
Day 2 was a rest day – I love that the challenge includes rest days!
Day 3: Enemy – Enemy would that be a reference to Smaug the Terrible? I love illustrating dragons, they are literally one of my favourite things to draw (the other being bees)
Created in Affinity Photo (its like Photoshop) this Smaug was first drawn onto paper and then copied onto my computer. Overall I think it was something like 65 layers I love the orange colour of the dragon and may put more detail into the background eventually…or maybe add a very small burglar hobbit.
Day 4: Forest – The Forest of Fangorn lies on our doorstep painted with oil on canvas, very much in the style of Bob Ross. I took up oil painting at the beginning of lockdown (somewhat unsuccessfully) but I enjoy it nonetheless. This is one of my better ones and I’m genuinely pleased with it.
After years of using watercolour, oil paint is a totally different animal to work with – I cant believe how long it takes to dry!
Firstly Happy national poetry day 2021! Secondly just a short post this week
As its the 7th of October thought I’d post this haiku!
I really love to write Haiku’s its so quick and easy. For those who may not know Haiku (or Hokku) is a Japanese form of verse most often composed (in English versions) of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables.
Thanks for reading,
have a great week.
Continuing with my fascination for Bees and other insects (but mainly bees), I thought I do a post of the current bee art that I’ve recently finished.
The bumble bee and honey bee are both drawn free hand and created using Arteza brush pens and Windsor Newton black ink and the embroidered bumblebee is sewn using a single strand of coloured floss at a time onto a natural (and excitingly eco friendly, recycled calico!)
Continue reading “A trio of bees {Art}”
So I’m an idiot.
I’ve been using WordPress for years (with varying degrees of success) and have literally just learnt that the less tags you use the better…I was using the Tumblr mentality of ‘the more the merrier’ which doesn’t work, according to all the help forums I read it can count as tag spamming and actually hide your posts from everyone!
Who knew…
I know that these flowers are super simple and fairly child-like, but I’m actually really pleased with them! I was kind of going for simplified Wildflowers from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Again they’re made using Arteza brush pens…I think I might start doing some tutorials in 2022…maybe…
On this day in 1937, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit was published. The first line of chapter 1 is ‘In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit.’ this particular book has always ben a favourite of mine and I read it more or less once a year. The copy I have was illustrated by Michael Hague and I found it in a little coffee/bookshop near LochNess in Scotland.
Placed onto the page is a coaster I made of a cartoonised door to BagEnd.
Also seeing as tomorrow is September 22nd – which is Bilbo Baggins’ Birthday I dug out my very well read copy of The Hobbit, think I might read it again…safe to say this is the book that ignited my love of dragons! Michael Hauge’s illustrations are beautiful and lead me to the works of John Howe and Alan Lee.
Thanks for visiting, have a safe adventure.
Hello friends, I hope the week treated you well!
To relax, get my brain into the right space and bee a little bit more zen I’ve sat quietly and embroidered myself a little bumble bee. Its all sewn free hand using a single strand of coloured floss at a time onto a natural (and excitingly eco friendly, recycled calico!) It’s been so lovely to study the photos of bees from the garden…as we have at least five types of bee I might sew one for each.
The hoop its in is six inches across and sewn in tiny stitches, I love the fact that the wings look realistic by sewing the threads in different directions.
I absolutely love embroidery, its so soothing and you really feel that you’ve achieved something when a project is finally finished.
Thank you for visiting have a great week.
ArtyMissK 