The Mey-Me Monster

It’s! Finally! Finished! The Balrog's description is rather vague. The book describes it as a very tall, man-shaped, but overall rather unclear form. It's also described as having mane. It held a whip in its left hand and a sword in its right hand. And basically everything is on fire. I looked at online forums to see what people's opinions were on the 2001-02 Balrog; the majority of people really seemed to like the direction that design took, despite the liberties that were taking with it. I personally love the sense of fear that the movie Balrog was able to portray, so I was definitely inpsired by some of its characteristics. Now that was also one of the main problems I faced; the movie Balrog is so incredibly iconic, I found it very difficult to come up with something unique that inspired that same sense of dread. Like the other characters, I really wanted to focus on giving the Balrog a shape. At the same time, the Balrog also needed to have a sense of ambiguity. On top of that, I also wanted to show that, like Gandalf, the Balrog was a Maiar spirit. There's a huge amount of scribbly thumbnail sketches I did for the Balrog and the overall painting composition before even beginning the final piece. So the actual painting provided me with a whole host of other challenges, the biggest of which was the amount of effects it required. I basically had to research a lot of smoke, fire, and lava and then figure out how to render them all in a "design-y" fashion while keeping the original shapes that I had planned for. After several weeks, it finally started getting to a place where I was happy with it, and at that point I just had to continue rendering it our more and more. And that took a while :) So there it is everyone: Durin's Bane! #balrog #gandalf #lotr #lordoftherings #moria #bridge #khazaddum #shadowandflame #youshallnotpass #tolkien #characterdesign #design #conceptart #visdev #visualdevelopment #fantasyart #creature #creatureart #creaturedesign #illustration #procreate #digitalpainting #digitalart #art #artwork https://www.instagram.com/p/B3TVTiojx90/?igshid=3jjfrfxz06bi

Trolls were made in mockery of the Ents. They were created out of stone and would turn to solid stone when exposed to sunlight. There are a few physical descriptions on trolls in LOTR, but I ended up taking a bit more of my own direction with them. The main thing I wanted to convey is that trolls were brutishly big, strong and dangerous. Besides that, I wanted the trolls to actually look like stone/rock creatures to really contrast them from the Ents. Over the last couple of weeks I worked on this for many short intervals, but this weekend I decided it was done. I’m quite ready to move on (Balrog be waiting!) Updates these weeks have been rather slow, as I’ve had to do a lot of things outside of work. I’m finally able to settle down a bit now though. Back to LOTR it is ;) #lotr #lordoftherings #troll #trolls #moria #stone #rock #creature #creatureart #fantasy #fantasyart #characterdesign #design #visualdevelopment #visdev #conceptart #digitalpainting #photoshop #instaart #artistsoninstagram https://www.instagram.com/p/Bzq8ZytANMk/?igshid=1ir6w65w5a13g

Finished the orc poses! Still working away on many, many French lessons, so personal artwork is a little slower than usual. I’ve got some concepts for trolls already though; I’m quite excited to work more on those now. Swipe for close-ups for these individual poses ;)

Orcs! I worked on this for quite a long time. I wanted to make sure that the orcs visually came across as foul and frightening while keeping a clear silhouette. There really isn’t all that much information on their physical appearance in the books, but Frodo and Sam do describe some orc characteristics after reuniting in the Tower of Cirith Ungol: orcs are bow-legged, have long arms that nearly reach the floor, and have both claws and fangs. Generally, they’re taller than hobbits. Other than that, sorry for taking forever to upload something for the last couple of weeks! I’ve moved to Montréal for a new job, and besides the whole ordeal of finding a place to live and moving into it, I’ve also been steadily taking French lessons on DuoLingo. Montréal is incredibly bilingual, although I do hope to learn French while I’m here :) Anyway, I’m slowly starting to find time to work on LOTR again, so hopefully I can pick up the original pace again within the next couple of weeks :) #orc #orcs #lotr #lordoftherings #fanart #scary #evil #digitalpainting #visdev #visualdevelopment #conceptart #characterdesign #animation #artistsoninstagram #instaart https://www.instagram.com/p/Bwj9AaUF9DJ/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=145n01bjt9fd8

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/3oLN5A

Sorry for the lack of updates recently. I’ve been traveling a bit and have some more of that to do this week. Hopefully I’ll be able to start uploading a bit more regularly in about a week or two. I have started some rough poses for Lobelia and I already have a whole bunch of concepts for orcs!!

Lobelia Sackville-Baggins! Yisssss!!! So Lobelia was incredibly fun, yet very tricky to figure out. I enjoyed trying to push the character a bit more, but I found it hard to make the shapes work. I was tweaking a lot of things even in the rendering stage. I’m also trying to wrap my mind around planning for the exposure in a painting. In this case, I tried to work with very dark shadows. This meant that I was able to play more with the colours of the lights, which was very fun to figure out!

Sometimes you just gotta do cute! Still figuring out painting on Procreate... and figuring out painting in general. Always room for more owls :) 

Finally started reading this series :)

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/k4GNNz

Some iPad painting studies from out and around the house. I only picked the nicer ones ;)

Tried some different painting techniques for this. I wanted to work with a limited palette, which was interesting. I also tried to limit my values, but that didn’t really work ;)

Wanted to draw something using lines only. Well, I guess there's a tiiiiny bit of tone too :) #drawing #portrait #guy #art #characterdesign https://www.instagram.com/p/BtKE4cshXPh/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=ldb6bjd9sqyb

Stupid basket.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/GX1Y1a

Figuring things out in Procreate and forcing myself to work a bit looser. I always come back to owls :) Do you have a go-to drawing subject? . . . . . #characterdesign #drawing #painting #owl #procreate #ipadart #visualdevelopment #conceptart https://www.instagram.com/p/BsjbJtvh6Tc/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=oseuhhng7fit

Continuing the LOTR project starting with Bilbo Baggins! When I hear the name “Bilbo,” I always picture a very round-looking character. It was an interesting experience trying to capture that visually. Anyway, this guy is ready for some poses now ;)