#INKtober Day 18: Feirce Orc

Welcome to Orthanc! Now please leave.

Don't laugh, you would be cranky too if you had to work for a jerk like Saruman.

Speaking of which, I saw the new Hobbit trailer in front of 'Gravity' this afternoon! It looks like it's 

going to be a really good movie - it appears as though things are going to get 

a little more complex in the second installment, which is good in my opinion.

And Benedict Cumberbatch as Smaug is going to be fantastic.

'Til next time folks!

Hobbit Giveaway!

Announcing: The one and only Hobbit Giveaway!

 I am giving away two, (yes two!) brand new Hobbit drawings.

How can you win them you say? Well, all you have to do is enter my drawing! Here are the prizes:

Prize number one:

1 (one) "Riddles in the Dark" original drawing - pencil on bristol

8.5x11"

 

 

_______________________

 

 

 

Prize number two:

1 (one) "Forest Goblin" original drawing - pencil on bristol

8x10"

 

 

How to Enter:

 

There are 2 ways to enter. Here they are:

 

1. Leave a comment on this post saying something like "I have got to have one of these drawings" or "I hate these drawings but I just like to win stuff - count me in".

Or to make it easy, you could just tell me your favorite character from The Hobbit.

Make sure your comment profile has an email address, so I can contact you!

 

2. Send me an @mention on Twitter using the hashtag #hobbitgiveaway This way I can see that you want to win something, and all your Twitter friends will know that you are an official member of the Drawing the Sword Fan Club.

 

The drawing will end on Friday, December 21st 2012 at 11:59PM!

 

When I finally drag myself out of bed on Saturday, I'll select 2 winners. The first winner will be contacted via email, and they will get to choose their drawing. Then I'll contact the next winner, and they will get the last one. If the first winner does not respond within 12 hours, I'll move on to the next winner.

 

Good luck! And I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Riddles in the Dark

 

Riddles in the Dark

pencil on bristol 8.5 x 11"

"Now he drew it out. It shone pale and dim before his eyes.

'So it is an elvish blade too,' he thought; 'and goblins are not very near,

and yet not far enough.' ...

 Now Bilbo was in what is called a tight place." 

Drawing number two in my Hobbit series. Hope you like it. I think I'm getting a little better at this drawing business. I still think I fuss over a great deal too many things that don't need to be fussed over, and ignore quite a few things that need desperate attention. Ah, well. I shall keep pressing on. Until next time, here is an excellent video of J.R.R. Tolkien himself, talking about his Lord of the Rings trilogy (and Hobbits too if I remember correctly. Watch for the 1960's college kids talking about what a Hobbit is, and the red-headed girl who rambles on about the story. You'll know what I mean, you can't miss it. Enjoy! And stay tuned - next week, I'll announce the BIG GIVEAWAY. Don't miss it!

Part 1:

Part 2:

Hobbit Month!

"Forest Goblin"

8.5 x 11" pencil on bristol. 2012

In approximately 26 days, Peter Jackson will release to the world his vision of Tolkien's first tale, The Hobbit. I am very excited to see this interpretation (as well as its two proposed sequels), but like many other artists, I have found myself wanting to get down on paper my own unique perspective on the story. For me, the book has a fairy-tale quality that is not seen in the Rings trilogy, and somewhat unfortunately, a quality that I fear will be missing from the film. It is a bit more rosy, full of rich imagery of smoke, firelight, laughter, hearty meals, wine, ale, coffee, seed cakes, maps, keys, gold, dragons, treasure, caves, secrets, and mountains. When I read "the pines were roaring on the heights" in Thorin's song in the opening of the book, I can directly relate that to my own experience with pines in a fierce wind, and it gives me chills. Tolkien & I have experienced the same thing, only in different places and times. So his tale instantly makes an impression on me.

Well, enough of me talking in intellectual circles. I hereby declare the next 26 days to be Hobbit Month here on Drawing the Sword. I'll be posting as many Hobbity sketches and drawings as I can in the next several weeks in anticipation of the film, and in celebration of J.R.R. Tolkien's wonderful little tale.

And as an added bonus, toward the end of this 26-ish days, I'll be hosting a Hobbit Giveaway. I'll be giving away one (or maybe more) original sketches to a random winner. More details on that later! Also, if you'd like to join me in doing your own Hobbit-related drawings or artworks, let me know because I'd love to see what you're up to. And if you wouldn't mind sending me a link, I'll feature you here on the blog in a post!

That's all for now! Happy drawing and check back soon for more!

-Will   

#146 Atmospheric Thumbnails

I'm trying to discipline myself to post on this blog on a Monday/Wednesday/Friday basis.

"Well Will you're doing a pretty awful job of it" you say.

But I'm posting. And it's Monday. And I haven't made a whole lot of progress on Desert Chase (although I did stretch some watercolor paper today, in preparation for another Hobbit portrait - more on that soon). So I rummaged through my cluttered hard drive to find some stuff in the archives that had never seen the light of day on the blog. These are atmospheric thumbnails for a school project I did a while back. They were so much fun to do. I will probably do these in preparation for my next illustration. But until then, you may enjoy these - on which, I will not elaborate to a great degree, only to tell you that they involove a lot of falcons, H. G. Wells Martians, and people in top hats running for their lives.

-Will

#143 Thorin Oakenshield: Digital Process

Thorin Oakenshield
(7 1/2" x 11" watercolor, digital)

Here is Thorin in all his digitally edited glory.
I had a lot of fun exploring this watercolor thing fully for the first time. I will say though that I was quite disappointed in the way I managed the color. I know very little color theory in general, but I knew that the helmet here was going to be gold, so in order to create a somewhat effective image, there would need to be a cooler, contrasting color (preferably in the shadow areas).
I believe that in the end it all ended up pretty muddy, because I was afraid of adding too much color into the image and making it to bright and vibrant. So, I continued to add wash after wash of light, muted color. This turned out to be somewhat of a disaster.
But there was a glimmer of hope! I could use Photoshop to improve this right? This all-powerful tool of pixel wizardry could turn even the worst of watercolors into a masterpiece! So I scanned it, and began.

The Un-Edited Scanned Painting.

The The scan was, of course, very greyed out and bland. Scanners have the evil intent of ruining your every attempt at artistic excellence. So upon entering Photoshop, I had to adjust the Levels to get the values back to normal. After this, I added several (as in five or six) Color Dodge & Color Burn layers. I painted over various areas of the painting in these layers with colors that I sampled from the image. This brightened and darkened the different colors I wanted to emphasize, and that I unfortunately wasn't able to achieve in the original painting. It also allowed me to create the illusion of the highlights "glowing". Finally, I dabbled with a Color Balance layer or two, giving the shadows a darker Violet tone to contrast the Yellows of the highlights.
Another thing that you may notice is that I eliminated those ghastly bags under Thorin's eyes with the Clone Stamp tool. I have no idea what possessed me to put those in the drawing.

So, hope you liked that little run-down of my process. Let me know what you think could use improvement. Now, on to other characters!

-Will