The Love of Starlight {Painting}

I got started on Tumblr a few months ago (I'm shaylynnann over there), and I've joined the Tolkien Read-Along event, in which a bunch of Tolkien fans got together and are reading The Silmarillion together.

(For those not nerdy enough to know what The Silmarillion is, it is basically the history and mythology of the world that The Lord of the Rings is set in. It's fantastic but something of a difficult read-- it's not a novel!).

On Sunday I had the rare luxury of free time with nothing to do and nothing hanging over my head, shouting deadlines in my ear. I spent the afternoon and evening drawing, inking, and painting this picture!

It is inspired by the Elves and their love of the stars, and features four quotes from the chapters The Silmarillion that we are covering in this week's readalong. 

For lack of a better name, I am calling this The Love of Starlight.

Click "READ MORE" to see the rest of this post-- behind the scene of the artwork, and an explanation of what is going on in the picture.

Fact: I can't EVER listen to anything but calm background music while doing this part of a drawing. It takes too much brainpower.

It's not exactly a secret that 1) I love basically everything Tolkien-related, 2) I love illuminated manuscripts, and 3) I love bright colors and detailed inkwork.

In this first picture, you can see the start of the drawing. Oh, the fun of rulers and compasses. I have to say that it is really nice to sit down and "doodle" a drawing. I know that this really doesn't qualify as a doodle, but I got to approach it with the same mindset. There were no assignment parameters, no specific challenges to meet, no particular story to tell. Just me, the paper, and some quotes from a book.

I've got my sketchbook with my old painting of the Two Trees of Valinor open because I wanted to echo the tree design in the new painting.

Fact: Listening to audiobooks and podcasts during this stage is the BEST.

I ran into some trouble with the inks.

I use an old fountain pen turned dip pen with interchangeable nibs, and the top part of the pen has somehow disappeared, so I just use my pencil extender to hold the nibs in place to write. The problem is that if I get carried away it's easy to pop the nib out of the extender and make the ink bleed everywhere... which it did, twice.

Also, my india ink somehow isn't perfectly waterproof. It was on 90% of the drawing, but on the quote "Even among the radiant flowers..." it bled like crazy when I attempted to paint it yellow. I'm confused.

The finished inking!

Next the watercolors!

I have a bit of a downfall when it comes to colors. I originally wanted the drawing to be mysterious and starlike in muted shades of blues, purples, silvers, and greens.

haha yeah right that was going to happen.

Instead I made a veritable rainbow. I still like the finished project, it's just not like what I originally thought up.

The good news is that I did not overly plan this painting (I sat down to read the chapters, decide what to draw, start, and finish, all in about six hours).

The finished piece! The last touch was to use some really cool shimmer paint that I found in my mom's  old scrapbooking kit. It doesn't show in the scan (the first image in this post), but hopefully the above photograph shows how sparkly, silver-y, and starlike the shimmer paint is.

Oh yes, and I also used masking fluid in order to make the stars. I originally was going to just load some white paint onto a paint brush, bang the brush on the back of my hand, and let it splatter, but then I remembered that I bought masking fluid and never learned to use it. I think I've got the hang of it now, and MAN does it SMELL!

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Now to explain the quotes and symbolism in this painting:

Fan of The Lord of the Rings know that the ancient, mysterious, and wise Elves love starlight. The Elves honor a semi-angelic being called Elbereth. Elbereth is also called Varda. Close readers of the book will recognize these names-- Frodo sings a song or hymn to Elbereth, as do the Elves.

The Silmarillion explains the reasons why the Elves love starlight and Varda so much. The short story is that the Elves came to being before the Sun and Moon were made.

(It helps to keep in mind that Tolkien's work is meant as a type of mythology and creation myth for the world of Arda (the world that contains Middle-Earth).  The Silmarillion seems to draw from old English and Norse and Germanic myths, but with the interesting mix of Tolkien's Catholic worldview flavoring it.)

So, in the beginning, before the Elves and Men were Awakened on Middle-Earth, the Valar (semi-angelic beings of a sort, including Varda) worked on Middle Earth. One of the Valar, Melkor, decided to go off and do his own thing and becomes the Head Honcho Evil Villain Of All Time.

The Valar made great Lamps to light Middle-Earth while they created the land and everything on it according to the plans of Iluvatar. Eventually Melkor destroyed the Lamps and set great Fires raging over the land. The good Valar decided they needed a break and went over to their special island called Valinor, there to wait until the Children of Iluvatar (aka Elves and Men) came into being. Meanwhile Middle-Earth was darkened by Head Honcho Evil Villain Of All Time.

Valinor was lit by the Two Trees of Valinor, which I explained a lot about back when I did a painting of the Two Trees. Basically, the Trees started keeping track of time. One gave off warm light for half a day, the other gave silvery blue light for the other half. The light of these trees was captured in the gemstones called the Silmaril, which caused a bunch of drama and after which The Silmarillion is named. Oh yeah, and the light of the two trees eventually became the Sun and the Moon. 

The Valar eventually learned from Iluvatar that the time for the coming of the Elves was nearing. They were worried about having to go fight Melkor, but decided to wait a while. In the meantime, though...

The Valar named Varda began a great labor, fixing the fires of innumerable bright stars in the sky. She worked for many years to bring light to Middle-Earth.

The Elves were Awakened on Middle Earth by a lake that reflected the light of the stars. They lived there for a time, learning about the world around them and developing language. But there was as yet no Sun or Moon.

When the Elves first appeared on Middle Earth, there was no light besides the light of the stars.

Later, the Valar wanted to keep the Elves safe from Melkor and invited the Elves to go to the Heavenlike island of Valinor. Many of the Elves did go, and were amazed by the beauty of the light given off by the Two Trees. 

Despite the beautiful light of the Trees (and later the light of the Sun and Moon), the Elves never lost their love of starlight and their special devotion to Varda, the Maker of the Stars.

The top of the painting features a quote from Iluvatar (who is basically a sort of allegory for God-- I know that Tolkien didn't like allegories but that's the best way to explain who Iluvatar is). He says:

"It is doom that the Firstborn shall come in the darkness... Great light is for their waning."

(The Firstborn are the Elves). Basically, Iluvatar is letting the Valar know that the Elves will not know the light of the Trees or of the Sun and Moon at the beginning.

The quote at the bottom of the painting reads:

"Varda took the silver dews from the vats of Telperion, and therewith she made new stars."

Telperion was the name of the Tree that gave off silvery light (and later created the light of the Moon). This quote is about her labor making the stars.

The central quote says:

"The eyes of the Quendi beheld first of all the stars of Heaven. Therefore they have ever loved the starlight."

(The Elves called themselves the Quendi). This is pretty self-explanatory.

The quote inside the larger ring needs some more explanation:

"Even among the radiant flowers of the Tree-Lit gardens, they longed still at times to see the stars."

Remember how the Valar invited the Elves to Valinor? And that the Two Trees lived on Valinor? This quote is about how the Elves never lost their love of the starlight.

The design covering the field of stars connecting the center calligraphy to the outer ring is a copy of the heraldic device used on the cover of The Silmarillion.

And the trees in the pictures (the bluish one and the yellowish one) are obviously the Two Trees.

The Silmarillion is very confusing to explain-- just read it to appreciate the beauty! But it was strangely inspirational right when I needed something random to draw. I hope you've liked this lengthly peek into my process!

Freshman Year -- 2D Design Art Dump!

Hey everyone! I have so much artwork from my freshman year that I'm going to have to break it up into a couple of posts. I'm pursuing a Graphic Design and Illustration major (it's a tough program to get in to and I won't know if I do until next spring) and freshman year was dedicated to the Foundations. These are the basic art classes that everyone in the art department has to take.

First semester I took 2D Design and Drawing I.

My 2D Design course was interesting... We had a textbook to learn the basics of art theory. I had honestly expected to learn more from it, considering that the only art class I had in the past was an informal one at the house of an artist who lives a few neighborhoods away. Being a bookworm pays off, though! 

The textbook and lectures fairly well bored me to death, and I'm far too critical of the way that art classes handle critiques. Critiques were three hour long ordeals in which we over-analyzed the movement, balance, repetition, etc, of abstract pieces of art. There was one kid who insisted that every single piece was somehow an abstract rendition of a city, another who said "it's crap" quite a lot, and another who was so nice to everyone that her critiques were more acclamation than critique. To be fair, I did learn a lot about ways of analyzing art and how to describe things that just look "off." 

However, I did come up with some pieces I was pretty excited about, and the professor was nice.

It might not look like much, but this drawing was really fun to do. It was one of those zen pieces, if you know what I mean. We had to incorporate patterns around random pieces of construction paper that we cut out. I love pen-work so spending hours doodling in class wasn't really a chore.

There is one thing I have to say about art classes-- it's weird to adjust to making art for someone else and oftentimes making things I really don't care about, yet still putting in all my best effort, work, and creativity.

Thankfully I've had some experience with that during these years of running my Shoppe (minus the "don't care about it" part because I always seem to care about jewelry-making). It's a strange mindset but I'm going to have to get used to it when I go into art and design as a career. There is a HUGE difference between personal art and work art, and I'm learning how to enjoy them both.



By the way, I hate construction paper so much now. We spent the first couple of weeks cutting out random shapes and gluing them in random ways and analyzing them. This is the only remotely interesting piece I made. One of the construction-paper pieces consisted of hand-cutting some perfect squares in three different sizes, and rearranging them until the professor approved it as "aesthetic"-- FOR SIX HOURS.

After this, we got to do some fun work.

One of the many things I've learned about art classes is that you really take out of them what you put in. It's not like math, science, or even (sometimes) the liberal arts, where you gain concrete knowledge as the end goal of the class, and there is a set amount of material to learn.

I've noticed that I get on the nerves of some fellow students because I'm always shooting for the stars, but I do like to challenge myself rather than settling for the bare minimum requirement for our assignments. 2D Design was a very basic course, but I did learn a lot simply from going overkill during the six hours a week I was in class.

The picture above was from an assignment to use perspective points and horizon lines to create a picture that incorporated visual volume. We were also allowed only three colors (of which we could only make tints and shades).

The inspiration came from M.C. Escher's "Polyhedra" (shown at right). Basically I constructed a bunch of basic shapes and had them interlock in visual 3D space. The only thing that I don't like about this piece is that my professor told me that I had to paint each face of the cubes and triangles a solid color-- no shading based on internal shadows. She said this was because it was too advanced for our class and some of the students don't know how to do it without reference photos. "Save it for dedicated painting classes."

I kind of wish that art students were less competitive. I know that competition is a big motivator (for myself included), but there are some people who can't be genuinely happy for another person's talent. I sure know that I have a hard time fighting off jealously for those insanely gifted people in my classes, and I understand the feeling 100%. However, I dislike being apologetic for trying my best at the things I do best.

Anyway-- back to art!

The colors in this photograph came out way too orange but I can't seem to Photoshop it into the real-life colors. (Did I really just verb-ify "Photoshop"?).

This was a technique in color-mixing. The piece had to incorporate transparent objects, but every change in color due to overlapping objects had to be done by MIXING the paint colors-- no easy-peasey washes. It took forever. 

I couldn't come up with what design to do (abstract work requires too much thinking, darn it!), so I decided to paint a song instead. I don't think I've talked about it much on this blog, but I've recently discovered that I am not crazy. (Surprise! lol!). Ever since I can remember, I've associated colors and shapes (and sometimes textures and personalities) with different things like music, letters, and numbers. It's an actual psychological phenomenon called synesthesia.

Anyway, that is just proof that I am not crazy when I said I wanted to paint a song. I picked a cool one by Mannheim Steamroller-- below is the YouTube video. I painted snippets from the first thirty seconds or so.

(The full Fresh Aire song collection is on youtube here).

I wonder if any of you can listen to the song and see it in the painting, too? The painting is pretty meaningful to me because it's one of the ways I remember the song, but I imagine it's just a normal abstract piece to literally everyone else.

In this painting, we had to start with cutting out a small piece of a design from anything and build an entire painting off of that one little cut out, perfectly matching the colors. If you look closely at the the painting, you can see a small shiny circle smack in the middle of the red and blue in the middle. That's a cut out from a tea container.

Anyway, the design I came up with is kinda-sorta based off of Dancheong (a Korean art form I've blogged about before). Only it morphed into something else altogether.

That's all the interesting work from my 2D design class! Later this week I'll share artwork from my Drawing I class.

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P.S. I have another flash sale going on on my Shoppe right now-- I'm moving everything from Artfire to Etsy, and I'd like to clear out some of my inventory while I make that switch!

This Woodland Elf Jewelry Set is 50% off right now.

(Note-- this one just sold as I was working on this post. I'm going to keep it in the post, though, because I like Frozen. :) It's a great movie!)

Want to stay in the loop and know every time I have a sale? Follow my Facebook page or Tumblr or Twitter!

Namárië

I finished this calligraphy piece several months ago but forgot to blog it-- it's J.R.R. Tolkien's beautiful poem Namárië from The Lord of the Rings. It is written in Quenya (the High Elvish language). On the left, the poem is written in our alphabet, and on the write, it is written in the Tengwar (Elvish) script.

The poem is a beautiful piece which the Lady Galadriel sings to Frodo when the Fellowship leaves Lothlorien to destroy the Ring. 

I didn't have space to fit the entire poem on my little sheet of paper board, so I just used the first stanza and stuck the final two lines (about farewells and finding Valinor) on at the end. 

The border was done entirely freehand using india ink and watercolors. I am pretty proud of it-- this was my first time making an Art Nouveau border, and I'm getting better at making celtic knots with decorative tips.

The heraldic device at the top is the symbol for Feanor, as designed by Tolkien himself. I thought this device would be fitting because not only is Feanor Galadriel's anscestor (if I have my genealogy straight), but it was mostly because of his family that the Elves were banished from Valinor-- and this poem is all about Galadriel's longing for Valinor when she thought she could not return, but nonetheless wished that Frodo may make it there one day. (Valinor is sort of like an Elvish heaven-- sort of, not really, but it's the best description I can come up with off the top of my head).

Here's the English version of the poem:

Ah! like gold fall the leaves in the wind,
long years numberless as the wings of trees!
The years have passed like swift draughts
of the sweet mead in lofty halls beyond the West,
beneath the blue vaults of Varda
wherein the stars tremble in the song of her voice, holy and queenly.

Who now shall refill the cup for me?

For now the Kindler, Varda, the Queen of the Stars,
from Mount Everwhite has uplifted her hands like clouds,
and all paths are drowned deep in shadow;
and out of a grey country darkness lies on the foaming waves between us,
and mist covers the jewels of Calacirya for ever.
Now lost, lost to those from the East is Valimar!
Farewell! Maybe thou shalt find Valimar.
Maybe even thou shalt find it. Farewell!

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For those of you complete Tolkienites, the title of this blog post ("Farewell") is not about me saying farewell to blogging or anything. I have one more crazy busy week of school left, and after that I will be taking a couple of days to just do nothing and not feel guilty about it (in other words, I will curl up on the hammock for two days and do nothing but devour some novels and drink lots of iced tea and catch up on TV shows before bed). After that, however, I will be working on some of the hundreds of creative projects that have been clanking around in my brain. :) 

It's so incredibly strange to think that I am almost done with high school. It's been a beautiful four years and I've learned and grown so much! For all of you still in school, when does your summer vacation begin?

The Two Trees of Valinor

This is a small painting that I completed recently, inspired by the Two Trees of Valinor as described in the first book of the Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien:

And as they watched, upon the mound there came forth two slender shoots; and silence was over all the world in that hour, nor was there any other sound save the chanting of Yavanna. Under her song the saplings grew and became fair and tail, and came to flower; and thus there awoke in the world the Two Trees of Valinor. Of all things which Yavanna made they have most renown, and about their fate all the tales of the Elder Days are woven.

The one had leaves of dark green that beneath were as shining silver, and from each of his countless flowers a dew of silver light was ever falling, and the earth beneath was dappled with the shadow of his fluttering leaves. The other bore leaves of a young green like the new-opened beech; their edges were of glittering gold. Flowers swung upon her branches in clusters of yellow flame, formed each to a glowing horn that spilled a golden rain upon the ground; and from the blossom of that tree there came forth warmth and a great light. Telperion the one was called in Valinor, and Silpion, and Ninquelote, and many other names; but Laurelin the other was, and Malinalda, and Culurien, and many names in song beside.

In seven hours the glory of each tree waxed to full and waned again to naught; and each awoke once more to life an hour before the other ceased to shine. Thus in Valinor twice every day there came a gentle hour of softer light when both trees were faint and their gold and silver beams were mingled. Telperion was the elder of the trees and came first to full stature and to bloom; and that first hour in which he shone, the white glimmer of a silver dawn, the Valar reckoned not into the tale of hours, but named it the Opening Hour, and counted from it the ages of their reign in Valinor.

Yavanna was one of the Valar-- essentially a sort of angel who worked to create the world that Iluvatar decreed-- and was responsible for all things that grew on Arda (the world, which Middle-Earth is a part of).

Telperion and Larelin were the only light besides the stars at this time. The Silmarils, gems of great beauty that played a huge role in the first few ages of Ea (the universe) (and which gave their name to The Silmarillion), were created from their dew.

Melkor, the main evil dude and Saruon's overlord-- grew jealous of the trees and their beauty. He wounded them and sent the 'gloom-weaver' Ungoliant (a giant spider, the great-great-great-something-grandmother of Shelob, of Lord of the Rings fame) to poison the trees and drain their sap.

The Sun and the Moon were created from the leaves of Larelin and Telperion, respectively. Other important items from LotR, including the White Tree of Gondor and Galadriel's phial of light which she gives Frodo, also come from these trees.

I had to use a lot of parenthesis to explain all of that... which is just proof that Tolkien truly was a genius subcreator. (That and that the depth of his work can get confusing). Everything had its own place in the story. The Silmarillion can be difficult to read at times, since it feels like a cross between an old mythology book and a dry history text-- a very different style from the Lord of the Rings trilogy--, but the stories are amazing. It is well worth reading! 

I thought I'd share some behind-the-scenes pictures for this painting, not because I'm a great artist whose technique you should copy (seriously, I broke so many "rules" while making this painting) but because I always enjoy seeing how other people approach drawing and you just might like seeing my process.

I began with a light pencil sketch. I didn't use any references-- which is usually a bad thing for me-- but in this case I did not want realistic trees, and so I let my stylistic tendencies go crazy.

Yes, the celtic knotwork in the tree branches was done entirely freehand and based off of nothing but a sharpie drawing I did in an old sketchbook.

I thought at first that I would simply outline the trees in a Chinese calligraphy style... but I've never managed to actually just make a simple picture. I always make things crazy complicated!

The outlining was done in gouache (rhymes with squash, yes, it's very fun to say) mixed with only a tad of water. I used the same brown mixed with blue, for Telperion, and yellow, for Larelin. Gouache (which is really difficult to spell and the spellchecker hates me at the moment) is a very interesting paint, and it feels like a mix between watercolor and acrylics. I totally don't know the proper way to use it.

At this point I thought I'd try painting the "mingling of lights" that occurred twice each day in Arda-- which is an amazing idea and is so much more beautiful inside my head than on paper.

The purple and yellow lights were originally done in watercolor but I went back over them with a very watered-down gouache. Normally you do the background first, people, it makes life easier...

At this point I went into full-out painting mode and really regretted doing this on regular thin journal paper.

You might notice some of the details here-- there are a lot of symbolic things in this picture. 

Firstly, the Celtic knotwork. Aside from being pretty, it's inspired by the interlacing decoration drawn by the Norse and Celtic people. Tolkien was greatly inspired by their mythology and the Two Trees remind me of the mythological tree Yggdrasil. 

Each tree intertwines around either the Sun or the Moon and the white flowers are inspired by the White Tree of Gondor. I also painted things like the rain of light and the speckled ground.

On the bottom are two leaves (which I tried to draw as Tolkien described for each tree) along with the three Silmarils. I know they don't look like real gems, but I copied Tolkien's heraldic design for them.

The Silmarils, drawn by J.R.R. Tolkien   (image via)

Everything was done in gouache, either very very watered down, like watercolor, or very thick and opaque. I don't know if you can see it but there are many places with decorative opaque white dots...

Gouache works really well in a calligraphy dip pen, by the way. And the Tengwar writing at the top is the English mode and merely reads "Trees of Valinor."

And because I like angled pictures:

Voila, there you go, I did a painting of the Two Trees of Valinor and it turned out nothing like what it appeared in my mind! I like the stylistic work, but I may try my hand at something more realistic...

DIY Altoids Watercolor Tin

Watercolors are a very handy paint because they are reusable once dry and you don't need to use a lot of paint to make a good painting. Plus, after a year of struggle, I'm starting to fall in love with watercolors and always like to have them handy.

But unless you are willing to shell out an exuberant amount of money on solid pan watercolors (or are willing to work with kiddie palettes seen in kindergartens around the world), watercolors aren't very portable.

Until you find an Altoids tin and a few hours for crafting. :)

The pictures are pretty self explanatory, so I'm not going to bore you with a bunch of rambling details and interesting tangents. Allons-y!

All you need is an Altoids tin, Mod Podge or another decoupage glue, paint sample cards (the kind with the glossy finish), and some watercolor tubes!

The height of the separators is up to you. 1 cm did the trick for me. It keeps the paint in but gives the tin some wriggle room so I can fit in mini paper, paper towel bits, pencil stubs, and mini paintbrushes, too.

At this point, I realized I needed more accordion-fold-paper-thingamabobbers, made a second one, and glued them together.

I then made some more separators so I could fit more colors into the tin. They are 1 cm wide and nestle into the accordion-fold paper..

Make sure that no paint can escape between the separators. Coat all the edges and corners with 2-3 thick layers of Mod Podge. Drying time between each layer will be exasperatingly long (about an hour) but it's worth it. For good measure, coat everything with Mod Podge just in case your paint card isn't glossy enough to be relatively waterproof.

As you can see from this picture, I hadn't properly sealed the separators and the red paint leaked.

These are colors that went into my tin. They don't have color names on them (they are from a set of watercolors my parents gave me when I was 10, and which I've only recently used. Notice how all the tubes are already breaking and paint is squishing and squashing all over the sides-- this is the perfect way to save old tubes of paint that would otherwise be hard to use!).

I wanted a wee container for holding water so that my kit could have everything I need for a tiny painting. After scavenging the house and testing out tiny plastic containers, I decided on the little plastic case that my brother's tiny scapular came in (far right).

I wanted to use the lid as a mixing palette, but didn't like the shiny gray, so I cut a plastic page separator from a notebook and glued it onto the lid.

There is still room to set some paper, paper towels, pencil stubs, and miniature paintbrushes on top of the watercolors.

Of course, it's not finished until you Mod Podge on a hand painted cover. And spelling watercolors the British way is a necessity. *nods gravely*

Overall, this is a fairly quick project that is absolutely free for people who have crafting materials hanging around. Well, the "curiously strong" mints aren't free, but you get to eat those so it's no biggie splurging a couple dollars. :)

If you attempt this project, please leave a comment! I'd love to check it out. :)

I made two tins, and the second was ultra miniature! I used one of those metal and plastic sleeves that allergy pills come in. The holes for the pills are the perfect size for a drop of paint. This one is so small that I can shove it in a pocket or tiny purse with no problem!

UPDATE:

After two years of dragging this tin around with me, it's still going strong! I brought it along with me to college, where it's come in very useful. I'll stash it in my backpack and work on sketchbook homework during my spare time-- or while eating a splurge of a breakfast ten minutes before a lecture class!

I highly recommend that anyone making a travel watercolor box invest in a waterbrush. These are paintbrushes that you can load with water, and they cost less than $7 at most stores.

Busy Ranting Dragons (Or, Hi! I'm back!)

When I was little, I always laughed when people told me to never complain about being bored. "Enjoy being a kid," they said. "Someday you'll want to be bored," they said.

"Clean your room if you're bored," Mom said.

Summer vacations with no neighbors your age and a tiny local library are a recipe for boredom. Never in my wildest dreams could nine-year-old-me imagine someone actually longing for hours with nothing to do and days that pass by in a dull monotony that is broken only by thrilling rides on the tree-swing and good books read on the hammock.

Now I really miss those days. For several months, I lived on caffinated tea and mechanical pencils. Now I have a glorious "nothing" going on all summer-- but I'm just as busy as before. Creativity is a heavy burden sometimes!

Two weeks ago, my family rented a cabin the the mountains of Colorado and had a GREAT vacation. I'll write about that later and share some of the senic photos (which I, of course, have not yet edited.) By the way, this is the reason for my long blog absence! Thanks to all the lovely people who guest posted! I hope you enjoyed their posts!

Then there was math. It's very tempting to share the long version, but the long version will easily morph out of reality and turn into a nightmarish dragon that snorts great gobs of rants between spurts of fire. I think you'd prefer the short version. It's a much friendlier specimen, with scales the color of a summer sun seen from indoors, and it only spurts rants a little bit.

I come from a family of engineers and scientists. My parents met in engineering school and well over 90% of relatives on both sides do something related to the left side of the brain. I'm the mutant who thinks with both sides of the brain-- I can do math, and I relish big science concepts, but the idea of doing that sort of thing for the rest of my life makes me want to shudder. Well, not the big science concepts. Those are cool. So are things like number theory and conic sections and trignometry and probability (at least sometimes!). The awful things are algebra, algebra, and more algebra. Alebgra does not like right-brained mutants.

This summer we had this brilliant plan of having me take a summer math class at a "nearby" community college (hour long round trip) so that I would have one less subject senior year. But the class that I tested into was crazy-- 6 credit hours in 8 weeks. That's nearly a full load, and I'd have to spend three hours each day of my summer sitting in a classroom listening to lectures on precalculus mathematics that I'd already done (the first part of the class was going to be review) and then just as much time each evening on homework. It doesn't help that if algebra is involved, my pace is quite slow. It's so gosh darn hard to keep the big picture in mind when you're caught up in number acrobatics.

After the first week, I knew that I would have to stop everything-- big art projects, summer get-togethers, regular posting on my blog, even taekwando-- in order to fit in this class, the rest of my Junior year, and Ink and Fairydust. My parents were surprisingly (to me, at least) supportive and even encouraging of my decision to drop the class. I did feel like a complete failure for a few days, though. Math has always been a sore subject for me, and I've always felt a little guilty that I don't enjoy it. I can do it, I can pull A's, but it's not something to look forward to.

It's definitely a struggle for me to have to choose what to spend my time on. God has blessed me with many talents and perhaps too much brain for my own good. There is so much that I want to do. So much that I could do, if only I had the time and energy to learn it all. What you see on my blog is only a minuscule portion of my interests.

This summer I am going to really focus on my art. I'll try to make two or three large pieces that would be worthy of a portfolio. (I have to apply to colleges in the fall!) I also want to hang out with friends, learn some new unicycle tricks, get in shape, have a good time with my family... That and finish Junior year and do the math book Dad gave me so that I can get speedier at algebra. Because apparently that's a really big deal, even for someone wanting to go into graphic design.

This is likely the last real summer vacation of my life and I can't believe how many projects I have planned for it! I also can't believe that it's half gone before I've begun. I had had an idea for teaching an art class for local kids, and I really, really hope it's not too late to get the ball rolling. Heehee, I need gas money, and I really do love teaching. And art. And NO, I have no plans of being a school art teacher, I want to do graphic design or animation.

In case you can't tell, I'm overwhelmed and a little unsure about things and I just put you through a rant. Here's something that's not about school or how busy I am. An oil painting!

The Road Goes Ever On and On

I've done some Lord of the Rings artwork lately. Here's a "triptych" (actually, just three paintings in a series, I just want to use "triptych" because "triptych" is a cool word and I like cool words. Triptych is cool. *adjusts bow tie*), a triptych of Tolkien's brilliant "Roads go ever on and on" poem.

Each drawing is based off of different verses or versions found in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I'll send you off to my DeviantArt pages for more info ( "The Road from Bag End", "The Road Back Home",  and "The Road to Mordor").

There is one last version of this poem that I could find, spoken by the elderly Bilbo at the end of all the adventures:

"The Road goes ever on and on

Out from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

Let others follow it who can!

Let them a journey new begin,

But I at last with weary feet

Will turn towards the lighted inn,

My evening-rest and sleep to meet."

I'm dearly tempted to paint that one, too. But then I wouldn't have a triptych.

The scanner wasn't kind to my paintings, so here's some photos for comparison.

While working on this, I listened to my favorite versions of this walking song:

My favorite version. 

I can't sing well, but this is an easy tune and I memorized it so I can sing it while walking the hiking trails... yes, a total geek here!

LotR the Musical version.

Not so fond of this one, but love the musical's version of "The Cat and the Moon."

Tolkien Ensemble version.

Again, not as fond of this particular version, but love the band's other songs-- and their version of "Beren and Luthien" is incredibly haunting.

The movie version (Gandalf humming/singing it)

Which version do you like best? And which verse of the poem is your favorite?