My Precious!

Eowyn and the Nazgul: Finished

So here is my effort for the Artorder challenge. Have to say I did learn a few things while doing this painting.
My outlook on how to increase my skills and knowledge about painting has change also. Trying to learn to paint on your own is a pretty hard slog, and knowing which direction to take can be a mystery, or illusive to say the least. But as they say 'painting is an old man's trade" so I'll keep gnawing away at it...no matter how long it takes. Anyway, I have a few experiments I have to try out soon with my paints, so keep watching and I'll post them in the near future.

Eowyn and the Nazgul: Almost done.

Well, at this stage I'm really close to the deadline so I'm doing my best to get most of it done.

Eowyn and the Nazgul: The Background.

Well, it's that moment where I throw on the colour. I have to admit I was starting to worry as I wasn't sure if I knew how it would look but throwing caution to the wind I kept at it. There was one stage I wasn't sure how to blend the dark clouds into the blue sky and decided to leave it for awhile. When I was outside feeding our animals, I looked up and studied the clouds for a bit and found my answer there, doh!


On my preliminary drawing I added in Minus Tirith to work out the perspective and placement. Once done, I used tracing paper to transfere it over onto my painting. I dry brushed some raw umber on the back of the tracing paper and then carefully placed it over my painting. I then ran a pencil over the lines which left small traces of raw umber lines of Minis Tirith...wahlah!


So here I've started on the Nazgul's wings...and still a long way to go.

Maquette of the Nazgul.

For the body of the beast I used a heavier guage wire and twisted it like I did the wings. I then just bent the wire to what I thought was close to the thumbnail sketch and started adding plasticine for the body shape. I then bent the wings to shape and stuck them to where they should go.

As you can see I made a mini horse maquette too.

I cut some black material and glued it to the wire...not an easy task! After that I brushed on some retouch varnish to the material to stiffen it up some so it could hold its shape.

And it's all done!

Maquette of the Nazgul.

As my previous post describe about the art challenge regarding Eowyn and the Nazgul, I decide to make a maquette based on my thumbnail sketch. I did this so I can obtain an accurate understanding of the lighting effect and a basic foundation of the actual winged beast. The materials I used were copper wire, kneadit (a two part epoxy putty), and plasticine. Below are some progress shots I took along the way as I made the wings. Next post I'll show you the following stage.

Eowyn and the Nazgul

Recently over at Art Order there's an art challenge themed on the confrontation between Eowyn and the witch king Agmar from the Lord of the Rings novel(the details of the challenge are found here).
There's some pretty big names judging this challenge in which they're are giving out "rewards"for those artists that impress them the most.
Originally I wasn't going to worry about this challenge as I haven't bothered about those challenges presented in the past from Art Order. But doing my usual daily doodles, I must have had it play at the back of my mind and this thumbnail sketch sort of came up out of nowhere. Considering the deadline is the 15th of May which will come round quick I'm sure, I'll have to get organized if I'm going to attempt my first challenge. Anyway, if real life treats me kindly in the next month I'll probably have some interesting things to show you all.