I was sketching dragons again recently, well I often sketch dragons but this time there was a purpose, the theme of the month over at john-howe.com for December was Dragons. As a certain dragon was on my mind with the Desolation of Smaug hitting the silver screen* I ended up wondering how Smaug would look after the black arrow had done its job 😉 This was a fun dragon to work on, well any character from Tolkien is fun to attempt – rather than use traditional medium I worked in…
Read MoreTag: hobbit
Under the stars
I’ve had a few ideas for star filled paintings recently, mainly they’ve been science fiction with sleek space ships zooming around. However the other day I returned to a Tolkien theme of Hobbits wandering under a star filled sky. The main aim was to make the Hobbits just visible enough to be in the painting yet make it believable that they were wandering under the stars with little to no Moon to illuminate the scene. Another aim was to use real star positions rather than just splatter the painting with…
Read MoreMr Hobbit
I was playing around with digital pen and ink (on Painter 12) and started a sketch of J. R. R. Tolkien, it quickly developed into a tinted version with some text 😉 I think I may enjoy playing with digital ink & paints 🙂
Read MoreAn unexpected review
I’ll be honest, just over six years ago when Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh posted the letter online that their services would not be required by New Line I never really imagined that a film would be made in the end. It appeared at the time we’d see nothing but legal arguments and inter-studio-squabbling. It’s 2219 days since that letter appeared online, and during that time there have been strikes, director changes, and of course the two films becames three, in three dimension, with extra frames per second…. Yes, we’re…
Read MoreSo that’s how it should look
Many moons ago (okay, three decades maybe) I remember sitting at my desk trying to recreate Thror’s* Map, several hours later I’d created a crumpled piece of paper covered in ink which looked, if you squinted quite a bit something like a map. It was quickly filed in the relevant section of the waste paper basket. A few years later and I was at a different desk but my task was the same, to recreate the map so that it looked just as I imagined it to be when reading…
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