#earendil

The Silmarils, gouache on bristol paper, 42 inches (3.5 feet) in diameter

I made a thing! Illustrations about the story of the silmarils in red-figure pottery style. It was fun to work on such a large scale.

‘My wife is like a bird that dwells in air.’

My favorite section in the book.not my art but my commission.

Eärendil the Mariner

Eärendil discovers, across even more years of orbiting his son, that parental intimacy has a half-life. In the early years, the child and the parent are truly adjacent if not outright conjoined: your daily rhythms intersect, your concerns overlap enough that a teat to the mouth requires no preamble. But children grow so fast. They move at a pace that creates distance even without separation. Elrond at two had been the back of his hand. Elrond at twenty five might be somewhat comprehensible. Elrond at five thousand will be utterly disorienting.

Like trying to know a city through its maps. The maps are accurate, often exhaustively so, but walking the streets reveals they had never contained what truly mattered about the place.