Apologia

I must start this post with a heartfelt and sincere apology. To all those who find the lighter side of fantasy art offensive you maybe should stop reading now, and to those who think you should never be over influenced by another illustration then you’re really not going to like this 😉 Okay, the explanation…. I was trying to come up with an idea for animals in armour as this is the theme over on John Howe’s website. So I sketched a few chickens in armour, and tried to think…

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It’s strange….

It’s strange how things develop and change when you’re playing with ideas for a painting. I’ve been wondering for a while how I’d paint Bilbo meeting Gandalf for the first time at Bag End, so I sat down with a couple of pencils and a large sketch book and pondered. Nothing came to me, I stared at a blank piece of paper and wondered if it was like they say about carving, the piece is already there you just have to chip away the waste. Well, I tried looking at…

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A long expected sculpture

Back in 2009 we excitedly placed an order for a sculpture from Weta. Now, we don’t normally go in for large sculptures, but this one was to be of Smaug™ the Golden and was the first piece in John Howe’s and Weta’s range of sculptures from Middle-earth™ The illustration of Smaug™ the Golden by John Howe is probably known by everyone who has read The Hobbit. Now, when I look at an illustration like this, I must admit I didn’t think it would be possible to recreate it in 3 dimensions…

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Wandering Wizard

This painting is something of a departure from what I had intended to paint, but then when you are painting something for a wandering theme a slight departure is to be expected. Anyway, the other day I was sitting reading a few pages of Lord of the Rings – the section where Gandalf leads Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli into Meduseld, and I had a clear idea what I had to paint. It’s strange really, whenever I paint something from Tolkien I want to include all the details I see in…

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