Eyes of Tol in Gaurhoth

When I first saw the ‘wolves’ theme over at john-howe.com this scene sprang to mind, from Tolkien’s tale of Beren and Lúthien… “Then Sauron stripped from the their disguise, and they stood before him naked and afraid. But though their kinds were revealed, Sauron could not discover their names or their purposes. He cast them therefore into a deep pit, dark and silent, and threatened to slay them cruel, unless one would betray the truth to him. From time to time they saw two eyes kindled in the dark, and…

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Hanter*

We woke this morning to clear(ish) skies and mist filling the valley below, the combination of mist and pre-dawn light was calling “come and play…” but the need to work and pay bills called louder. As a compromise I set off early in the hope of grabbing a quick photo before work. Halfway into the journey and the car almost drove itself on the slight detour down to the river Eden at Lazonby. I’ve been there a number of times before, and normally around this time of day with mist…

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It’s been a while

For one reason or another I’ve not had chance to get the watercolours out for what feels like years, so I decided to make the effort and get my eye in again with a small practice piece. Now I have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of reference photographs which I take and file for just such occasions. Living where we do surrounded by such excellent scenery it would be difficult not to have a reasonable selection of reference images really. This is of course why I ended up painting something…

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An 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…

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