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Tuesday, April 17, 2012

The Silmarillion: Glaurung

















To see more from the Silmarillion project, check out the rest of the show at Gallery Nucleus.

15 comments:

  1. Love your Glaurung. Similar to John Howe's in shape. I prefer it when he's depicted as a broad-set and malevolent lizard. It gives you the impression that he just crawls anywhere he wants. Makes him more menacing. If that makes sense.

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    1. I totally agree. And yeah it is hard to improve upon Howe's designs for dragons. Especially for Wyrms in particular (if I can be allowed the subset).
      It's sort of like Paul Bonner and Trolls. After seeing his approach to them, I just can't really think of them any other way.

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  2. These are pretty amazing! Regarding your studies, how do you NOT go insane doing it all over again for the final sketch (making sure you get it exact...or at least in its full essence... as you originally drew it)? Tracing paper? Mind powers? A good nights sleep? And also able to do it in a manner that it cohesively connects all the separate parts/studies together?

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    1. I will say that it can be hard to try and keep the liveliness found in the initial thumbnails. I sometimes have to go back to them a number of times to figure out what was working in them before moving on to the final. But I love working in pencil, so I don't usually mind redrawing that much. I like getting it right if I can. All the initial work is about getting the mess-ups out of the way. So that hopefully that final painting is smooth sailing. It's just like writing literature or screenplays or music. You have to revise revise revise to get it right.

      Also, I mostly use a light table for transferring. But sometimes, like with the brown paper, will use a chalk transfer. And mind powers.

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  3. I love your Glaurung too, but be careful not to fall to the same mistake I made.
    He's called Glaurung the Golden for a reason ;)

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  4. Great! I love the little details like the axe stuck in the shield!

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  5. Wow! Your work gets my blood moving. Great piece once again!

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  6. You've done amazing work on this Silmarillion series! With you we usually get 3 full blown pieces of art ... tight sketch, watercolour and digital overpaint. Are you considering giving any of these the digital treatment at some point?

    They don't need it, but would be cool nevertheless.
    Fantastic work!

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  7. Are we going to be blessed with this collection in book form?

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  8. Hello Justin! First time commenting, but I discovered your work with your Hobbit work a few months ago. I absolutely love your work, and can tell you is the best new illustration of Tolkien I've seen in a long time.

    Just a comment on your Silmarillion work: it's GENIUS to have everyone use Greek/Roman paraphernalia for the First Age. We actually discussed something similar once at The One Ring dot net

    http://newboards.theonering.net/forum/gforum/perl/gforum.cgi?post=321307;search_string=greek;#321307

    Thanks for bringing a fresh air to Tolkien illustration, I hope you can eventually become one if the books' illustrators. Cheers!

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  9. Impressive work. Of course, not everything looks like I pictured in my head, but is by far the best renfering of scenes and characters of The Silmarillion I ever saw.
    Specially like the portrait of Morgoth.

    Cheers from Spain,

    Fer

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  10. Simply there are no words, fantastic works!

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  11. Just got back from seeing your Silmarillion gallery, in Alhambra sir. LOVED IT! Bought your 2 sketchbook's too. It was a cool way to celebrate my birthday. Keep up the good work sir! :)

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  12. wonderful!! i love it!

    what brand and kind of paper do you use??

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  13. Got to be the best interpretation yet! These are definitely classic pieces of art!!

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