A Map of the Mountain: Digital Process

Balin (with pint) and Bombur (with pipe). 

A Map of the Mountain: Watercolor

"It may have been secret once," said Thorin, "But how do we know that it is secret any longer? Old Smaug has lived there long enough now to find out anything there is to know about those caves."

Aside from the Hobbit series being awesome and such a great story to work on, I also wanted to do this project as a means to improve my technique. I've been wanting to get back into watercolors for some time now. I have never really had the patience for watercolors and I need to practice and find a method by which I can slow down and patiently, methodically finish a complete, full-size illustration in watercolor. The Hobbit story seems to lend itself to being rendered in a classic medium.
My parents are wonderful people who did their best to make sure that my sisters and I recieved excellent educations. I am forever grateful to them for their efforts. Sadly, I ignored the eductional systems they perscribed for the most part and was instead raised by video games. Video games promised me superior hand-eye coordination, problem-solving skills and quick reflexes. And (like television,) they also promised me vicarious adventures where I could pilot military aircraft and journey to space without ever having to worry about getting shot or losing limbs. School promised me hours of boredom, tedium and an occasional snow day.

So I chose video games, and among many other character deficits, it has left me with an inability to cope with the tedious drying times and baffling mixing qualities of watercolor. (I also blame video games for that car wreck I had 2 years ago, but that is another story.)
Nobody establishes to children WHY they are at school. Children are intellegent, they see through the smokescreens. They may play along, but their minds are sharp and they are seeing through the falacies and unless there is substance there they aren't REALLY going to buy in. For instance, had I been informed that if I excelled in english and literature at school, that years later I would be able to construct my thoughts in a way that would impress girls, that might have had currency. Had I been told that if I stayed dedicated to solving the problems in algebra, even though they were stubborn, obsitanant and went against all the fundamental logic of the universe, that I would later be better able to master classic mediums, I might have bought in. As it was, I was told that I needed to finish school so that I could go to more school later on. Like algebra, this type of logic didn't make any sense to me.

So now, in the uphill treck to correct at least some of my bad habits and life errors, I hope to improve my watercolor technique through practice with this great story.

A Map of the Mountain: Sketches

A Map of the Mountain: Sketches

On the table in the light of a big lamp witha red shade he spread a piece of parchment rather like a map.
"This was made by Thror, your grandfather, Thorin," he said in answer to the dwarves' excited questions. "It is a plan of the mountain."

The Hobbit: A Map of the Mountain

The First piece I am going to work on for this project is the scene where Gandalf lays out the map of the Lonely Mountain before Bilbo and the dwarves. This has always been one of my favorite scenes because every good adventure needs a planning stage where the team gathers conspiratorially around maps and charts and blueprints and hatches the plan.  And taking a mountain fortress full of gold from a fire-breathing dragon and hordes of wolf-riding goblins deserves of a bit of careful planning and thoughtful discussion. 

"Where are you going?" said Thorin in a tone that semed to show that he guessed both halves of the hobbit's mind.
"How about a little light?" said Bilbo apologetically.
"We like the dark," said all the dwarves, " Dark for dark busines!"

The Hobbit

I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy when I was in high school, a few years before Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema put together the films. Like many people, when I read J.R.R. Tolkien's series I had all kinds of visual ideas in my own mind of what the characters, monsters and places looked like. I remember having very clear notions of Shelob as a trap-door spider, that Isengard was more geometric and turned into a diamond at its top, that Sauron was seen as smoke and eyes and the illusion of oil-slick armor, that the orcs were meatier and more ape-like, with much longer arms, and knuckles that dragged the ground. The Balrog was only ever seen by the cracks in his flesh and his eyes and jaws. His skin would never really be seen for the smoke coming off it. The cracks in his skin would be like those in a lava flows seen at night, where some of it has cooled at the surface, but underneath it is still burning. And a  few hundred other odd, now-forgotten notions of Middle Earth. 
I had not seen, at this point, any of Alan Lee, Ted Nasmith's or John Howe's fantastic paintings, of which the film's art direction was to be largely based on. I had a lot of very crystalized ideas in my head about how everything looked.
And when the films were released I was jarred my first time seeing them. Things didn't look like they had in my head. At first it bothered me. They got it all wrong I thought. But as the Fellowship of the Ring began to make its way towards Rivendell I was surprised that I found that I really enjoyed it anyway. It was a different take than I had, but it was spectacular and I went back and watched them several times each in the theater.

Then something terrible happened. 

I found that I had lost my ideas. At first, they were only tainted by the films, but after a while I found that I had lost them altogether. And no matter how much I tried to see things differently, I still saw it the way Peter Jackson showed it. The Boromir I had imaged was gone and Sean Bean's character remained. The goblins were hunched and crooked green men without noses.

This has bothered me ever since, and now that The Hobbit films are on the schedule to be released next year I find that my ideas on The Hobbit are to be put in jeopardy as well.  

So, this time I have decided to put my own ideas down first, before Jackson and Del Toro and Weta and Howe and Lee can come together to blow my mind apart again with what is sure to be an awesome Hobbit film. This time, I hope to preserve my own notions of what Middle Earth might have looked like. 

So, with that in mind, I am going to take a few months and illustrate a few of the major scenes from The Hobbit. These pieces are not for any specific book or series, as I don't have the personal rights to make a book on the story. But I do intend on putting one of them in the empty space over my fireplace. And even if these images never make it to any type of publication, this story is wonderful and I think it will be great fun to work on it for a while.

ACM #2 Final Framed Piece

ACM #2 Final Render

ACM #2 Digital Process

ACM #2 Watercolor

ACM #2 Watercolor Process

ACM #2 Reference Photos

I love using photos from hikes. Photography is great in that it can take you back to a point and help you remember not only the moment itself, but everything else about what was around you when you took the photo.



This is Cades Cove in the Smokey Mountains. It's a beautiful place, though it is somehow always overcast and drizzling when I go. It reminds me of the forests I hiked in as a boy in Western Pennsylvania. I have many fond memories there. I waged an ongoing war with river trolls, stalked ancient druids and was hunted by giant, black-eyed foxes.

Years later I found that same old forest using the terrain feature on Google Maps. It was strange seeing it from above, from this odd and unfamiliar angle. But I was delighted to find that I could still make out all the old haunts of my childhood. The same trails, the same clear ponds covered in algae, the same clearings in the forest. And though some of the remote edges of my old realm were somewhat overcome by a spreading plague of parking lots, it was, for the most part, all still there.



This one is from Giant Sequoia National Forest, in California. This forest sat on a cliff overlooking the ocean. It was as if the giant trees had in ancient times, been planted all across North America, and at some point pulled up their roots and strode west, only to be stopped here forever by the Pacific.