From the Dragon's Hoard

From the Dragon's Hoard by Shaylynn Rackers. 18x18 inches, charcoal and graphite.

This drawing was inspired by The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. In the book, Bilbo Baggins discovers that the dragon Smaug is mysteriously missing from his cavern hall and fetches Thorin and Company. The dwarves were at first hesitant, then delved eagerly into the piles of gold and jewels. They find beautiful weapons and gird themselves with armor. I imagine this taking place just before Thorin gives Bilbo the mithril coat.


A few weeks ago, Mom sent me a link to the Hobbit Design Contest. I love art and I love The Lord of the Rings and I'm completely hyped for the Hobbit movies, so several friends encouraged me to enter. Technically I wasn't even old enough to enter when the contest began, but I turned 18 before the deadline so it's all good. :) This is a worldwide contest and there are some SPECTACULAR entries, especially in the Characters and Creatures categories. Go check it out. I hope to be able to paint like those artists someday! Anyway, that is what inspired this crazy venture.

At first I wasn't sure what to draw-- and even now I'm surprised I didn't do a drawing of one of the characters! But I love intricate detail and I love designing jewelry, so I had decided to try my hand drawing a sword and putting in as much crazy detail as I could.

The drawing took a week of my free time (and then some! I wasn't very productive that week...). I listened to the entire unabridged Fellowship of the Ring, so I guess it took around twenty hours.


And now, some behind-the-scenes stuff...

When I first told my teacher that I was going to draw a sword and started getting very animated about weapons, she disappeared upstairs and came back with this beauty! She let me bring it home to use as reference for a week.

(A friend just told me that this dagger is a replica of the one that Harry tries to kill Peter Parker with in Spiderman II!)

A katana, sparring staffs, and a couple of awesome swords made their way downstairs, too, and we giggled over them for awhile. She was a black belt in Taekwando and did weapons training, although she doesn't remember any of the weapons' forms. (It was pretty epic watching her do a couple of basics, though). Then we talked for a long time, comparing my taekwando lessons with hers, and I wasn't super productive that class. :D

I did a concept drawing of my sword, which wound up looking nothing like the Spiderman dagger. I did use the filigree design on the scabbard, but turned it into proper knotwork by adjusting the over-under pattern.

My brother Will was my "studio" guinea pig and stood like a statue in the back room while I played with camera settings. Dad's awesome-strong hands became the dwarf's hands, and Mom posed for me so I could get the tunic's wrinkles right. My football-player brother was supposed to help, too, but he went and got his hands stuck in casts after a game and couldn't pose as a dwarf.

I still wonder if I should have tried harder to get that drastic lighting you see in the photographs.

By the way, yes, it IS very possible for veins to be this big in real life, and for fingers to be so muscular. People keep asking if it's all super exaggerated-- it's not, just look at the pictures of my dad's hands above!

Dad surprised me by buying me a thick pad of my favorite paper ever-- Bristol board. And a nice giant size, too! Thanks for saving me a long drive to the art store. :)

(Note the Dwarven runes on the ring! It says "treasure.")

Everything was going fine, until:

THIS.

I'd put the drawing in the securest corner of my bedroom (a two-foot square space by my desk). My littlest brother decided to play with some of my sister's toys. Which would have been okay, except that he got bored and apparently started spinning around on my desk chair. Which somehow fit into the two-foot space. And somehow, he fell over with the chair and the chair went SQEEEEEEK across my drawing. (I felt so bad for him, he was so sorry).

I wasn't too worried until I saw that the permanent gray color and the deep dent wasn't just on the blank space. It was on the already drawn sword guard.

The funny thing is that the dent was easy to disguise on the guard. It took less than an hour! However, the dent across the blank space was very difficult to deal with because my charcoal would not fill it in! I was able to darken up most of the streak (and make the tunic less detailed) but in certain lighting you can still see the shimmer from the compressed paper. It turned out OK, though.

Taking the photo of the finished piece.

A friend asked me to film myself the next time I did a drawing, so I did. If you feel like spending ten minutes of your life watching clips of me drawing, you are welcome to.

UPDATE:

AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! HOLY COW!

Check out the blog post about it here!

Colored Pencil on the Ceiling

"Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and
supreme experience if one only had a coloured pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling."

~G.K. Chesterton

I love those weeks when the world sparkles with new beauty hidden in every mundane corner... just begging me to draw, draw, draw, and draw.

School has already been going for four weeks, and I've had several other projects keeping me busy, but an artist just can't resist the call of pens and pencils. :)

So, here are a few of the drawings I've done over the past month! Enjoy, and I hope you have a great holiday weekend! I'll be off spending my free time making some jewelry and drawing when I'm not hanging with friends and family!

(click to enlarge. the first nine are on deviantart-- click the image for a description!)

unfinished frontispeice for my sketchbook.

A comic for each hour of the day

A 3cm drawing of Samwise Gamgee.
(Facebook fans are familiar with this drawing-- only a few people guessed who it was! I need to work on miniature drawings, methinks.)

 Erm.... a self portrait. Have pity on me! It was my first real project at art class-- and my first time trying to draw me in a mirror-- and I hadn't touched chalk pastels for... I think literally for years. :) So have mercy on me... can you tell that chalk pastels don't like to co-operate with me?!

(eeep! you guys know I'm taking art classes now, right? i'm so excited, i've never done them before and my teacher is amazing! the watercolor painting above the self-portrait was done at art class, too.)

Frodo and Sam

Frodo:

I can't do this, Sam.

Sam:
I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are.
It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened?
But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why.
But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.


Frodo:
What are we holding onto, Sam?


Sam:
That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for.

 The above quote is one of the best in all of Lord of the Rings. And the above picture is the best I have ever drawn, LotR or not.

My dad's favorite LotR character is Sam. He went with Frodo every step of the way, and yet he didn't need to. He is loyal, corageous, and loving. It is Sam, as much as Frodo, who saved Middle-Earth.

After Gandalf, Aragorn, and Arwen, I decided to make a drawing of Sam for Father's Day. I searched all around, but had great difficulties finding any picture that personified Samwise Gamgee. I finally printed out one of the promotional portriats, with Sam smiling. That very day, I found a peice of art by professional artist Esteljif on Deviantart. I was astounded that the picture was not a photo! Esteljif generously sent me the screencap that I based my drawing off of-- this scene is shown for a short second at the end of The Two Towers, right after the above quote is spoken.

My fingers refused to rest! I worked on this drawing for 4 days, and usually after everyone went to bed and it was quiet. I have no idea how long I worked each day-- well over two hours! I got as caught up drawing as I do when reading a page-turner.




I am rather pleased with the drawing. It is certainly the best I have ever drawn. I think I managed to get emotion in it, despite the extreme technical difficulties (such as the angle of Frodo's face).

 Of course, now that I have put the picture in a frame, I realize that the shadow on Sam's left eye needs to be darker, and his right cheek narrower. Oh, well! :)
This was my first chance to use my drawing board. :) It is also the first time in years that I have used the dreaded graphing method. I prefer to anaylze my drawings into various underlying shapes and go total freehand. I was daunted by this picture, though, and drew a light 4 by 6 grid over both the screencap and my paper. I used it to help me with basic placement, though I soon erased the lines and did the rest by eye.

I took pictures along the way (seeing the drawing on an inch-big screen helps me as much or more than turning it upside down).

Here are those WIP (Work In Progress) pictures. I put them in a slideshow. Click the bottom right button to go to the photo album, where you can see the pictures much larger.



Here are some more pictures:

My hands. Notice all the graphite on them-- quite a mess!

And that is why I use peices of paper to protect my art from my hands. I usually had two peices-- one for my drawing hand, and one for the hand holding the picture steady.

Me, doing what I love best! (Although not looking the best! lol)

Drawings

A few weeks ago, we visited my cousins for a First Communion and a Confirmation. Mom suggested I draw pictures for them (the day before!) and this is what I came up with-- St. George and the Dragon for my cousin recieving his first Communion, and St. Benedict for my cousin recieving Confirmation with St. Benedict as his patron.

Gandalf

The Lord of the Rings has, yet again, been dragged around wherever I go. This time around, I am reading it sloooowly, taking time to absorb all the depth and detail. Of course, I can never read such an awesome book without a strong itch to draw...

This drawing is based off of a black-and-white photograph. I drew it entirely freehand. Total time ran around 3 hours.

I have to say that this is the first drawing I have ever done that ACTUALLY looks like the person I am drawing.

I loved drawing the eyes. I love drawing eyes in general. This is the first time I've ever drawn baggy, wrinkly, squinting, strong, and kindly eyes. I'm not convinced I nailed it, but everyone says it looks like Gandalf.

THE BEARD. Ohhhh, the beard. Because of the scanner, you can't see all the light detail on the right hand side, but if you look at the left side you can see how I drew the beard. Line. After. Line. Scribble. After. Scribble.

The eyebrows were interesting but lots of fun. :)

My brother has claimed this picture for his bedroom. :) Its not usual for this particular brother to admit liking anything I make, so I take it as a good sign.

Let me take a moment to say that I don't like scanners!!!! The scanner lost half the detail. :(

EDIT: WORK IN PROGRESS PICTURES

(the picture I used for reference is actually a photo, not a drawing!)

(you can see more detail if you click this bottom picture. 'Cause it was taken with a camera, not a scanner.)

Aragorn

Aragorn! Aragorn and Sam are tied for my all time favorite Lord of the Rings character. The day after I finished my Gandalf drawing, my brother immediantly printed out a poster of Aragorn and told me that I must draw it.

So I did! The picture had strange lighting... It made Aragorn look angry rather than kingly. I tried fixing that in my drawing, but I messed up the eyes a bit. It looks like he's got a black eye... I've fixed that but haven't taken a photo of the fixed drawing. :P

I spent a good four hours on this drawing. I'm not sure, though; I lose track of time! Honestly, I get as caught up in artwork as I do when reading a book. And let me tell you-- I can never put books down. If I am interrupted, I go about doing everything distractedly, wondering what will happen... running off to read the first availble moment... Art is like that, too!!!

Here is the Work In Progress:

The chainmail. Oh, I have no words for the chain mail... I have no idea how to do it, and my usual technique of "just do it and see what happens" didn't yeild the results I wanted,

My facebook status at this point said: "Some people are able to patiently spend hours drawing realistic chainmail. After five minutes, I realized that I shall never count myself among their number. Hello, sqiggles."

L. reminded me that squiggles will never protect said drawing in the event of a spear thrust...

But squiggle-mail must Aragorn don, because this artist ain't got that kind of patience.