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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Station 3

This is going to look a little odd, but stay with me a moment 😉 I had a random idea for an illustration to submit to the Wanderers theme over at john-howe.com – Now the idea was fairly simple in my little head, but needed a little bit of an explanation. I tried a couple of times to write a simple piece to go with it and ended up more frustrated than satisfied with the outcome, and so I decided to write a short story to accompany the illustration. I…

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Wandering Mind

I’ve been trying to get some ideas together for a painting, I know the basic idea of what I want to achieve at the end, it’s the bits that go into it that are causing the problems. So rather than try and sketch out the full scene I’ve been playing with different elements of it. Naturally this led to my mind wandering and I ended up with a couple of Tolkien related sketches 🙂 First one of the Three-Farthings Stone in the Shire –   Then there was one of…

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