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olorielSooo it has been brought to my attention that I should have posted this here as well as on the Tumblesite, which I should have realised by myself but didn't. Since I am reasonably pleased with this one for a change, I'll gladly use this chance to repeat my ramble. Better late than never, I guess.
Because this time, I can actually do a walkthrough of the Artistic Process (TM)! Usually, I paint in A4 and only do one scan of the lineart and one scan of the finished thing because I am teh lazy. This time I painted on A3 paper to have enough space for everything, which meant I couldn’t scan it at all. But I was so terrified of messing the whole epic thing up that I took photos of it after every major step. (How I would have gotten these grainy shots back onto A3 paper in order to try again is a puzzle I would have tried to solve if I’d had to. Fortunately, I didn’t.)
So I shall ramble you through How Lyra Paints Stuff... now.
There’s actually one step of the process I didn’t document, and that’s the preliminary sketches. I don’t usually do these, but with this pic, I was so terrified of messing up (see above) that for once, I tried to figure out the composition in advance. I had attempted this back in March for B2MeM and failed, so I had reason to be scared! So unlike my usual lazy habits, I actually toyed with different perspectives, decided that I would be unable to pull off a full frontal dragon. Ashhimring has aptly observed, it really ended up corresponding to my description of the ceiling mosaic in the great hall at Andúnië in TEA, aside from not being a mosaic and the dramatic clouds, see below. At least I am consistent? >_> I also figured out Eärendil’s posture cos you can’t just fight a dragon balancing precariously on the rail, can you! Unfortunately, I forgot to keep that sheet so it seems to have gone the way of all waste paper. Alas. I was kind of cute, with some silly notes scrawled in, like "Wear a helmet, dude" after I first drew Eärendil with long open flowy hair like any self-respecting Tolkien fan artist would. Oh well. If it turns up somewhere after all, I’ll edit it in later.
So here’s the basic lineart. Isn’t that exciting. As you can see, I can’t stick to a single perspective to save my life. I also discovered that when you’re designing dragons, there’s a fine fine line between “terrifying” and “ridiculous” (as I observed back on... August 17. Holy shit, I actually waited for two months until the reveal! No wonder I fell out of patience). Alas, Ancalagon looked like a scruffy chicken! So I decided to try belly plating instead of scales.
Yes. Somewhat better.
With that in place, it was time to start colouring. On the background because washes need to come first. Now, I hate doing backgrounds. I know they make a picture about 200% more dynamic and I need every boost I can get, but I still hate them. Which is why I ditched my original idea of doing really dramatic clouds and a storm-light atmosphere (my favourite kind of sky). I had to admit to myself that I just wouldn’t be able to handle the complexity of the texture and the lighting situation. That is what differentiates Me (TM) from real artists (TM).
So I went for a sort of dirty purplish pre-dawn wash, except for that strip of dawn (or possibly fire) at the lower end. And the bit of sky around Vingilot. Yeah, yeah, I know, you wouldn’t get nice clear-cut beams like that and if you did, they should be distributed threedimensionally, and the lighting on Ancalagon is all wrong anyway. Look, it’s a feckin’ image of a flying ship and a dragon, the primary source of light is a goddamn Silmaril, don’t bother me with realism? >_>
Making some headway. -- The kids insisted that the dragon should be red. They eventually accepted that this is a night dragon and night dragons are black, but it took a lot of discussing until we got there.
Needed moar birbs.
That moment when you realise you completely forgot to add corvids, wtf is wrong with you Lyra, corvids are the best, better sneak some in!
(Praise the Valar for Google Image Search, btw. In the olden days (TM) I would have had to lug home five books on ornithology home from the library and still not have found so many good reference shots of Various Birds From Below.)
Vingilot. Ah, Vingilot. I really prefer to think of her as a proper ship made of white timbers, and most pics I’ve seen depict her that way. Bilbo Baggins, however, suggests that Eärendil got a new ship “of mithril and of elven-glass" by the Valar. But he’s an outlier, right? Surely we can discount Bilbo. He wasn’t there. People who make verses about Eärendil in the House of Elrond probably shouldn’t be trusted anyway. Glass, bah.
EXCEPT that what Bilbo actually has done at this point is deal with a dragon, and he’d know that people who sit in wooden boats shouldn’t tackle a firedrake. We know that dragon-fire is hot enough to melt even the minor Rings of Power, so it’s definitely hot enough to crisp up a wooden ship in a single sneeze. But if we assume that mithril is basically titanium and elven-glass is kinda like pyrex, they might just be able to withstand the heat (conveniently, without getting too hot themselves and frying Eärendil in the process). Besides, I guess it makes sense to use translucent/reflecting materials for maximum brightness. TL;DR Bilbo's got a point, it can’t be the original wooden ship. (Which means that Eärendil’s crew could simply return home in the same vessel that brought them there, in case anyone ever wondered about that.)
Voilà, translucent-ish Vingilot II. And tiny!Eärendil. Good thing I bothered with the preliminary sketch because you can see so much detail at this tiny scale, haha, not. BUT he’s got one leg safely on board and the other resting squarely on the railing instead of pulling some Captain Jack Sparrow shit, yeah! Most of him is protected by the stupid swan prow, he’s got a shield, he’s got a helmet and a mithril shirt, AND he’s got a lifeline attached to his belt. Safety-conscious, is our Eärendil.
Superzoom! Fire of doom! Ancalagon has really poor aim though. I guess he’s distracted by Thorondor and his merry feathered friends. Or bliiinded by the liiight. Or just a bit stoopid. He did hit a falcon though. Poor thing, I hope it'll crashland somewhere soft...
Some more faffing with the background, trying to add some texture and contrast and interest. Screw it, this is as good as it’s likely to get, time to slap my signature on. There we go.
"But Eärendil came, shining with white flame, and about Vingilot were gathered all the great birds of heaven and Thorondor was their captain, and there was battle in the air all the day and through a dark night of doubt. Before the rising of the sun Eärendil slew Ancalagon the Black, the mightiest of the dragon-host, and cast him from the sky; and he fell upon the towers of Thangorodrim, and they were broken in his ruin."
Because this time, I can actually do a walkthrough of the Artistic Process (TM)! Usually, I paint in A4 and only do one scan of the lineart and one scan of the finished thing because I am teh lazy. This time I painted on A3 paper to have enough space for everything, which meant I couldn’t scan it at all. But I was so terrified of messing the whole epic thing up that I took photos of it after every major step. (How I would have gotten these grainy shots back onto A3 paper in order to try again is a puzzle I would have tried to solve if I’d had to. Fortunately, I didn’t.)
So I shall ramble you through How Lyra Paints Stuff... now.
There’s actually one step of the process I didn’t document, and that’s the preliminary sketches. I don’t usually do these, but with this pic, I was so terrified of messing up (see above) that for once, I tried to figure out the composition in advance. I had attempted this back in March for B2MeM and failed, so I had reason to be scared! So unlike my usual lazy habits, I actually toyed with different perspectives, decided that I would be unable to pull off a full frontal dragon. As
hhimring has aptly observed, it really ended up corresponding to my description of the ceiling mosaic in the great hall at Andúnië in TEA, aside from not being a mosaic and the dramatic clouds, see below. At least I am consistent? >_> I also figured out Eärendil’s posture cos you can’t just fight a dragon balancing precariously on the rail, can you! Unfortunately, I forgot to keep that sheet so it seems to have gone the way of all waste paper. Alas. I was kind of cute, with some silly notes scrawled in, like "Wear a helmet, dude" after I first drew Eärendil with long open flowy hair like any self-respecting Tolkien fan artist would. Oh well. If it turns up somewhere after all, I’ll edit it in later.
So here’s the basic lineart. Isn’t that exciting. As you can see, I can’t stick to a single perspective to save my life. I also discovered that when you’re designing dragons, there’s a fine fine line between “terrifying” and “ridiculous” (as I observed back on... August 17. Holy shit, I actually waited for two months until the reveal! No wonder I fell out of patience). Alas, Ancalagon looked like a scruffy chicken! So I decided to try belly plating instead of scales.
Yes. Somewhat better.
With that in place, it was time to start colouring. On the background because washes need to come first. Now, I hate doing backgrounds. I know they make a picture about 200% more dynamic and I need every boost I can get, but I still hate them. Which is why I ditched my original idea of doing really dramatic clouds and a storm-light atmosphere (my favourite kind of sky). I had to admit to myself that I just wouldn’t be able to handle the complexity of the texture and the lighting situation. That is what differentiates Me (TM) from real artists (TM).
So I went for a sort of dirty purplish pre-dawn wash, except for that strip of dawn (or possibly fire) at the lower end. And the bit of sky around Vingilot. Yeah, yeah, I know, you wouldn’t get nice clear-cut beams like that and if you did, they should be distributed threedimensionally, and the lighting on Ancalagon is all wrong anyway. Look, it’s a feckin’ image of a flying ship and a dragon, the primary source of light is a goddamn Silmaril, don’t bother me with realism? >_>
Making some headway. -- The kids insisted that the dragon should be red. They eventually accepted that this is a night dragon and night dragons are black, but it took a lot of discussing until we got there.
Needed moar birbs.
That moment when you realise you completely forgot to add corvids, wtf is wrong with you Lyra, corvids are the best, better sneak some in!
(Praise the Valar for Google Image Search, btw. In the olden days (TM) I would have had to lug home five books on ornithology home from the library and still not have found so many good reference shots of Various Birds From Below.)
Vingilot. Ah, Vingilot. I really prefer to think of her as a proper ship made of white timbers, and most pics I’ve seen depict her that way. Bilbo Baggins, however, suggests that Eärendil got a new ship “of mithril and of elven-glass" by the Valar. But he’s an outlier, right? Surely we can discount Bilbo. He wasn’t there. People who make verses about Eärendil in the House of Elrond probably shouldn’t be trusted anyway. Glass, bah.
EXCEPT that what Bilbo actually has done at this point is deal with a dragon, and he’d know that people who sit in wooden boats shouldn’t tackle a firedrake. We know that dragon-fire is hot enough to melt even the minor Rings of Power, so it’s definitely hot enough to crisp up a wooden ship in a single sneeze. But if we assume that mithril is basically titanium and elven-glass is kinda like pyrex, they might just be able to withstand the heat (conveniently, without getting too hot themselves and frying Eärendil in the process). Besides, I guess it makes sense to use translucent/reflecting materials for maximum brightness. TL;DR Bilbo's got a point, it can’t be the original wooden ship. (Which means that Eärendil’s crew could simply return home in the same vessel that brought them there, in case anyone ever wondered about that.)
Voilà, translucent-ish Vingilot II. And tiny!Eärendil. Good thing I bothered with the preliminary sketch because you can see so much detail at this tiny scale, haha, not. BUT he’s got one leg safely on board and the other resting squarely on the railing instead of pulling some Captain Jack Sparrow shit, yeah! Most of him is protected by the stupid swan prow, he’s got a shield, he’s got a helmet and a mithril shirt, AND he’s got a lifeline attached to his belt. Safety-conscious, is our Eärendil.
Superzoom! Fire of doom! Ancalagon has really poor aim though. I guess he’s distracted by Thorondor and his merry feathered friends. Or bliiinded by the liiight. Or just a bit stoopid. He did hit a falcon though. Poor thing, I hope it'll crashland somewhere soft...
Some more faffing with the background, trying to add some texture and contrast and interest. Screw it, this is as good as it’s likely to get, time to slap my signature on. There we go.
"But Eärendil came, shining with white flame, and about Vingilot were gathered all the great birds of heaven and Thorondor was their captain, and there was battle in the air all the day and through a dark night of doubt. Before the rising of the sun Eärendil slew Ancalagon the Black, the mightiest of the dragon-host, and cast him from the sky; and he fell upon the towers of Thangorodrim, and they were broken in his ruin."
