Leaving Bag End

I came up with this idea of painting scenes from J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings with the night sky as it would actually appear on that date and time, so I went through LOTRs and marked up all the references to when the night sky was visible, there’s quite a few references πŸ˜‰ Anyway, I decided for the first illustration to work out how the sky would have looked as the left Bag End, then I painted the scene – the sky took far too long, then,…

Read More

100 Shades of Grey

I had a small piece of watercolour board left over from the last project so I decided to practice mixing greys, as you do πŸ˜‰ Needing a subject I opted to paint one of Tolkien’s illustrations of the Lonely Mountain. Grey has never been an easy colour to mix for me so the rubble strewn and scorched landscape surround the front gate  was an ideal subject.

Read More