Tolkientober Days 27-28

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.

Tolkientober Days 24-26

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!

Tolkientober Days 17-19

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).

Tolkientober Days 12-14

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.

Tolkientober Days 10-11

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.

Tolkientober Days 6-8

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.

Tolkientober Days 1-4

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!

The Hobbit

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.