Graeme Skinner » silmarillion

Silliness and Stuff

Graeme — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 17:20:55 +0000

Okay, the ‘stuff’ first, I’ll be uploading the weekly challenge backlog shortly, well as soon as I’ve found the book with them all in :-/ Now for the silliness. I’ve been busy painting landscapes, and generally being far too serious for my own good. So, when I turned to the theme of the month over on John Howe’s website I had to do something a little more light hearted. The theme this month is ‘Under Sea & Under Wave’, and for this I scribbled a quick Photoshop picture.

When Looney Tunes illustrated the Silmarillion…

they may have misread the part about Ulmo – here, Elmer (lord of the seas) makes his way to Tuor.

With apologies to Tolkien, Looney Tunes, Tolkien fans, and generally everyone else.

Ilmarin, a little house in the Country (pt.4)

Graeme — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 11:43:41 +0000

So, I finally completed the pen & ink of Ilmarin, it’s a version 1 of Ilmarin anyway as during the inking stage I had a few more ideas as to how the building should look.

Next I’m going to try and colour the pen & ink in Photoshop elephants, one day I’ll afford the full version, but for now adding a colour or two should be possible

Ilmarin, a little house in the Country (pt.1)

Graeme — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 12:08:04 +0000

I went to bed this morning just after seven feeling quite weary and ready for a good doze, little did I think when I climbed the stairs that my mind would not let me get away with things that easy.

The trouble started a week or so ago when I started reading The Silmarillion again, this was to get ideas for an illustration or two for the theme of the month over at john-howe.com, now I’ve read the book a number of times, and have dipped in and out of it at random over the years, but this is the first time I’ve really sat down and read it with a view to illustrating something from it. One of the first things that struck me was how many images suggested themselves from early on; scenes that once were very abstract (such as those in Ainulindalë) became quite distinct in my mind.

It was, however, when I got to Manwe’s little pad ‘Ilmarin’ that my brain started to churn with ideas, at first the scene was easy to imagine, the mountains upon which Ilmarin sprang easily to mind. Then my mind turned to the style of building Ilmarin would take that I encountered problems; there is little in the way of architectural description to work on so I let my pencil wander. At first I went for a towered castle (complete with round towers at varying heights and nice point roofs), but this did not feel right, then I sketched a square towered castle, or more accurately a square peel tower with a chunky house strapped on the side, this did not feel right either. The main descriptive phrase describing Ilmarin “mansion of Manwe” made me think that the building should be more of a country house affair than anything else, something like this…

For some reason though I keep thinking to myself that is should be more majestic maybe incorporating some features from a cathedral, maybe a flying buttress or two. It was thinking of this that resulted in me not really sleeping this morning, something I know I’ll regret later

Now I need to sketch some more, formulate an idea or two, I’ll post updates another day

note: I’m using the name Ilmarin here to mean the mansion of Manwe, I realize that is could be taken to mean the whole of Taniquetil as well.