Brandy Hall - A New Piece After A Long Time Away

This is my first new piece after a long hiatus. It is called Brandy Hall.

The Brandy bucks kept making additions to Brandy Hall until it occupied the whole of the hill, had three large front doors, many side-doors, and about a hundred windows.

Here, then is Brandy Hall.

This is my first blog in a very long time, but it is also time to begin again. Lots has happened in the past two years including the loss of my dear little Mom and a big move ... downsizing from my large home that I shared with Mom during her final years to a lovely and much smaller, minimal maintenance town house. I simply love it here ... as snug as a bug in a rug!

My art was put away at Mom's passing and I have been more than busy with real life since then. Now it is time to begin anew. I feel recharged and have some new artistic challenges in mind. I am hopelessly (or hopefully) still a Tolkien artist at heart and so my efforts will continue to be based on Tolkien's visions of Middle-earth. He is so wonderfully descriptive of the landscapes and places and that is where I know I will always gravitate.

I am still struggling to develop my own unique artistic 'style'. I plan to continue to use markers as my 'home base' medium, but I dabbled in acrylics recently and it was eye opening and great fun. Brace yourselves!

So, I am going to pull out Fonstad's The Atlas of Middle-earth and wander through her terrific and detailed maps for inspiration. Who knows where I will end up, but I can guarantee that if it is in Middle-earth, it will be glorious. LOL ... hopefully my artistic visions will be worth the effort and everyone's time.

Bombs away!!

The Great Gates to Thranduil's Hall

I think this piece turned out rather exotic, even for Tolkien, but then I have always thought that Thranduil and the Wood-elves were exotic too. Perhaps it is that they lived underground which seems to me to be an odd place for Elves to live, even during the dark times. Both Rivendell and Lorien evoke fresh air and communing with nature much more than caves ... even the wonderful ones in Mirkwood ... and especially caves that the Dwarves helped construct.

This piece is again done in markers and ink with the addition of shimmering gold acrylic that highlights the gates themselves. The 'shimmering gold' does not translate well to digital imagery, but I think you can get the idea. The gates hint of copper, but I guess that's OK. Not everything in Tolkien's world can be made of mithril, you know.

The Great Gates to Thranduil's Hall

Laketown

This piece was fun and a little tough all at the same time. I have been wanting to try a Laketown concept from The Hobbit for a while now and was at first a bit stymied on how to pull off the look I wanted (as is my style) for a town that was literally built on stilts. All those straight building and piers and decks. Well, once I had the drawing where I wanted it which eliminated all that ... WooHoo!! ... let the colors begin. My joy and enthusiasm was short lived when the darker colors I tried on the first incarnation made for a muddy mess. Too dark. No contrast or vibrancy. Live and learn. The second time around I stuck with bold colors and shading. I like the results much better. Here, then, is ...


Laketown

Bagshot Row

This piece turned out to be far more fun than I anticipated and I think the results are just about smack on where I wanted them to be. For the most part, Bilbo's Shire always seems to me to be a place of fair weather and green hills ... and of course, Hobbits. What could be more 'hobbity' than Bagshot Row with it's line of round doors nestled on the hillside. There is a saying that comfort is everything. It that is true then I imagine the Shire and Bagshot Row to be at the top of the comfort list. Here is my ...

Bagshot Row

Beorn's Hall

I have wanted to do this piece for a long time but I couldn't get the concept just right. The other artist renderings of the inside of Beorn's Hall that I have seen have either been way too detailed and all that wood planking looked like match sticks or the colors are all muddied up. The coloring is a challenge because Tolkien describes it as made entirely of timbers with a central fire and platforms at the side. So, I think my stylized version helps a lot to simplify the vision and control all those woody timbers and muddy browns. Here then is my version of ...

Beorn's Hall

Goblin-gate

This is one of those instances (and there are many for me in Tolkien's writings) where the simple act of Tolkien formulating the perfect word or phrase is enough to inspire a vivid image. So it is with his word, Goblin-gate. Placed in the story of The Hobbit where it is, it conjures up a scene that is crystal clear to me. Tolkien talks about it being 'high up' and there were landslides and steep valleys. Obviously (at least in my mind) there had to be a river running through it as well. Here then is my vision of ...

Goblin-gate