Draw It Again!

For my June pencil drawing, I decided to revisit some familiar territory.  Back in 2002, I spent most of Black Friday drawing this portrait of Boromir on giant paper.  Look at this slightly blurry, partial photo of it:

Obviously this was back in the day when I 1) drew on giant paper and 2) could do a whole giant drawing in one day.  Now I am slower and smaller and...better?  Well, I thought another Boromir portrait would turn out AMAZING by comparison and in the end he just turned out okay:

When I finished, I realized that he looked like cartoon Boromir.  His face is off, and I think I COULD fix it, but with pencil there's always the risk of ruining it, especially since my paper doesn't erase very well.  So...this is where my Boromir drawing skills will stand, for possibly another twelve years (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). 

I do like how his clothing turned out and it's always fun doing LOTR characters.  Maybe some more will pop up before the end of the year.  Maybe even some...Thorin...?  MAYBE.

An Unexpected Posting (J & D)

Once we saw the (first) movie in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit series.  Overall we liked it (not as much as his masterpiece that is The Lord of the Rings, but how could anything be as amazing as that?), and who knows if we'll like it more or less as the series goes on, but in any case, it did inspire a few more polished arts, so now we shall present them to you!  First, I'll turn the reins over to J to introduce her masterpiece.

In The Hobbit, you may recall, there is a certain villainous orc of significance called Azog.  He's big, pale and scarred and wreaks havoc periodically during the movie.  He also loses half of one arm and replaces it with a robot hand long, clawed contraption.  But I just couldn't stop thinking of a more practical thing he could stick in there: 

Surely every orc is in need of a good back scratching.  Weta is missing out on my brilliant ideas, you guys!!!!

...

Back to me!  Whatever issues I have with this movie, I think Martin Freeman is brilliant as Bilbo, and so one day he appeared in my sketchbook.  I liked the result so much that I decided to paint it, and so, here he is:

Son of Belladonna Took, Photoshop

Just for fun, here's the original sketch.  Sometimes it's worth seeing things in their rougher form too.

We'll see what happens this December with part the second! As far as we can tell from the first trailer, it features a lot of Legolas and a lot of Kate.

A Hobbit (J)

Back in ye olde days of the past, I spent many many many hours drawing all the different characters from Lord of the Rings.  Wait, I still do that.  Anyway, I used to do it a LOT, and so with the arrival of The Hobbit, it seemed only fair to give it a little bit of the same treatment.

This was a faster drawing, done with just a mechanical pencil in my sketchbook, but he still seemed to take quite a while.  Somehow I started this without realizing his shirt is completely covered in stripes.  Let's just say it was a happy moment when I finished those stripes!  But it seems like every drawing has something in it that makes you insane--like curly hair, embroidery, sequins, what have you.  (If it features Mrs. Lovett, then it has all three of those things and then some.)

Anyway, I can't promise to follow this up with a bunch of dwarf portraits but we'll see.  I'll probably get more inspired with Legolas turns up again...

Legolas. And some options.

Legolas is pretty much done. And yet he is not complete. Take a look.
No matter how much I try to plan this from the beginning, my drawings rarely wind up centered on the page. Thus, I have a history of making things look centered, or at least intentionally off center. In the past I've done lines (here and here) and maps (here). And now along comes Legolas. Lines won't work for him because he's got that line from the bow string happening. I originally planned on a map but will that look good? Here are the options, as I see them:

• Figure out some kind of line system.
  
• Cut the paper (this feels like cheating).
• Do some kind of map.
• Stop spazzing about it and just let him be done.
  

He's been at this stage since the start of April and I have yet to make a decision. Of course the last, most horrible option of all is to keep drawing and give him more body until I get to the bottom of the page. I call this horrible because let me tell you, this whole Legolas project was so much harder to finish than I expected. I whined, I got angry and I won't deny that I cried about it more than once. I used to have so much more time to devote to these kinds of projects so now that I don't it just went on FOREVER and for so long it seemed like I didn't make any progress at all. So...I just don't want to add to him. At least not now. So I guess I could add one more option.

• Leave him at this stage indefinitely until I feel like adding more to his person.
  

So, Internet, what do you think? Give me guidance! To make it extra easy I'm going to add a poll. Help!

(PS: Sorry that picture is so crummy.)

Legolas: 2/3

Um....I didn't get more sandpaper. *fail*

Legolas 1/27

Another week, another bout of Legolas work. I spent several hours on it this week so I made good progress, technically.
I say technically because what I did doesn't look as good as I would like it to. His hand is only half done, mainly because I haven't decided on including the bow or not, which changes what I do with his fingers. So that looks unfinished and weird. And when I was working on his shirt I felt a little overwhelmed with the amount of fabric and where all the folds had to go and intercept and squish and squash. The last few peeps I've drawn, I realize now, didn't really involve a lot of detailed clothing (like this). So I think I'm just out of practice. Anyway, I also decided I need a new bit of sandpaper because, for the life of me, I could not get a nice long point on my lead, which also made things frustrating. Urgh.

Anyway. This weekend I am going to get some new sandpaper, and I always have the option of going back and changing and fixing things. So it's not over yet. I press forward!

**Okay, after looking at my things I realize that hello, I have done a lot of messy fabric recently. Like this and this and this. What the heck, Legolas? Why can't you be more like Sweeney?

Legolas 1/20

Okay, this was not my finest week, Legolas-production-wise. In fact, all that I did I did this very night, in about 45 minutes. Yikes, too fast. I wasn't really feeling it so I didn't try to draw any longer than the minimum I had set for myself. But still, progress is progress and he's coming along faster than he has in the last six months. Here he is:
And just to make things interesting, here is my set up at the moment.
I just sit on the floor. Maybe one day I'll have an easel. Anyway, the lighting is not great, but since I'm not home during the day for the natural light, I make do with the lamp.

And here are the tools of my trade.
I have a really hard time throwing away bits of pencil leads that are really too short to work with. In fact, I have never thrown any away. Hah! Take that!

Here's to another week! Hopefully this is the week Legolas gets a hand and some more torso.

Legolas 1/13

Accountability works! It's been kind of a busy week, due to apartment hunting, but I still fit in about 3-4 hours. He's coming along! This week's picture also features a lovely orange-ish glow. One thing I really miss about being a college student is the access to a nice scanner. One day, Epson, one day.

So, this week I did the last patch on the top, and started the belt (okay, it's not a belt but it is like belt). Tonight I did his arm band (okay, they aren't arm bands, but they are like arm bands), and finally worked out his hand. I haven't really decided how far down to draw him. My original plan was to stop at the line of the the bow string, but I'm not sure now. I'll probably just continue with what I have and then decide when it comes to it. I don't really want his body to just run off the page though so...we'll see. Here's to progress!

Resolution! aka Legolas

Cast your mind back to the end of 2001. Do you remember a big, glorious movie that came out then? No, not that one--I mean Lord of the Rings. Long story short, I loved it (LOVED IT). Shortly thereafter I got myself a lovely calendar and started drawing everyone in it. I started here:
Despite the fact that that drawing was perfection, I drew that same picture again, about 3 years later. By that point I'd spent a year in the illustration program and basically relearned how to draw. Fast forward another few years to my first year of graduate school and I drew it again--or at least I started it.

Last January I started drawing it again. Why? No, not because I needed a reason to study Orlando Bloom's face for 30 hours. Basically I was hit hard with some first-year-of-college nostalgia, when I used to play the Fellowship soundtrack and draw. So I started again, and I made some great progress. Then I got a job and have only spent a handful of hours on it since.

But! I have a list of art goals for this year, and at the top is to finish poor dear Legolas. It's been so long since I started it I'm a little tempted to start it all over again, but since I'll probably draw it again in, oh, three or four years I'm not going to worry about that.

Here is Legolas today.
I'll take a picture* of him every week and post his progress, even if there's been none (accountability!). When he's done, I'll post all four of them so you can see how he's changed over the years. Then maybe I can finally take another whack at Aragorn.

*When it's all done I'll do a proper scan, but for just updates this is a lot easier.