And this I will say to you, Boromir, ere I end. Lonely men are we, Rangers of the wild, hunters–but hunters ever of the servants of the Enemy; for they are found in many places, not in Mordor only.

`If Gondor, Boromir, has been a stalwart tower, we have played another part. Many evil things there are that your strong walls and bright swords do not stay. You know little of the lands beyond your bounds. Peace and freedom, do you say? The North would have known them little but for us. Fear would have destroyed them. But when dark things come from the houseless hills, or creep from sunless woods, they fly from us. What roads would any dare to tread, what safety would there be in quiet lands, or in the homes of simple men at night, if the Dúnedain were asleep, or were all gone into the grave?

`And yet less thanks have we than you. Travellers scowl at us, and countrymen give us scornful names. “Strider” I am to one fat man who lives within a day’s march of foes that would freeze his heart or lay his little town in ruin, if he were not guarded ceaselessly. Yet we would not have it otherwise. If simple folk are free from care and fear, simple they will be, and we must be secret to keep them so. That has been the task of my kindred, while the years have lengthened and the grass has grown.

Trying part II

Painting takes quite a bit longer at the moment, this is down to arthritis in my hand/wrist which is causing issues and making me swear quite a bit but I’m still trying

I had previously tried this scene in pen and ink but thought paint was more appropriate this time

I had a small piece of watercolour board left over from the last project so I decided to practice mixing greys, as you do

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.

This of course led me to the illustration by Tolkien of the Hill…

Which of course meant I needed to know how those buildings would look from the other side, the easiest solution of course is to do a quick mock up in 3D…

In the end, sitting doodling was an easier solution to getting the image from my head onto paper. Of course now I’ve finished there’s a few things I’d like to change next time, and a version you could manipulate in 3D would be fun, so you can step out of the door yourself

Bit of an Arthurian theme here – Merlin the enchanter in all his various forms and origins, from Taliesin, Myrrddin, etc., all the way through to The Once and Future King.

I went on a bit of a wander, with the pencil that is, and I spent far too much time sketching Camelot high on a hill, with plenty of mist. So it’s only appropriate that I ended up painting Merlin, lost in thought and in the wood