Next up, it’s Thom Merrilin, Gleeman and Former court bard!
As usual, this is finished because I’m sick of it, not because it doesn’t need more work.
I wanted to try painting one of the older characters, and omg it’s so much harder than painting the smooth skinned pretty young’uns! I’m not even sure I’ve given him a smile and not a leers, but I’ve looked at it too much and it’s time for something else.
I made the mistake of starting this one without a clear picture in my head of what I wanted it to look like, and then went back to EoTW to read Thom’s description the first time the character appears. Sounds like he wears a big baggy coat full of knives and stuff under his gleeman’s cloak, but I’d already progressed the image too far into burnt out territory and didn’t try to illustrate that.
So what we got is a mix of half Gleeman, half court bard.
Spoiler free artistic process below the cut!
WHEEL OF TIME PORTRAIT COLLECTION:
Galad - Clean - Dirty - Sigil (will link to separate post)
Rand - Clean - Dirty - Sigil (will link to separate post)
Berelain - Clean - Sigil (will link to separate post)
Morgase - Clean - Sigil (will link to separate post)
Bela - Clean - Sigil (will link to separate post)
Thom - (You are here)
MY ARTISTIC CHOICES (canon corrections welcome)
I’m a little dissatisfied with the image – frustrated because I just don’t want to work on it, and ended up with a mixed style of clothing. I didn’t use references for the clothes and maybe that’s why I’m not happy with them. I don’t think I’m competent enough to just make things up in my mind and paint them without a guide.
I wanted to paint a Thom who is clearly an older man, but not a frail elderly man. A lot of the existing art and fanart out there make him look scrawny and frail. I liked the TV series version of Thom because it was refreshing to see him portrayed as man who seemed to have more vitality than the majority of the art shows him as having. TV Thom was robust, but maybe a little too young than I how I imagine him? I also think that Elayne wouldn’t have had her little flirtation with a man who looked too elderly which is another reason I went against the grain and didn’t paint him as a bony old man.
I really don’t think I made his face look gnarled or leathery enough. I admit, I’ve never really painted an older face, so maybe I’ll get better at it as I go (still got older characters like Tam as potential portraits). I also don’t think my image gives a good idea that Thom is “lanky”.
I tried to make his hands look weathered and wrinkled, but I got so lazy I didn't try very hard.
Thom is described as having long moustaches that hang down either side of his mouth, and bushy eyebrows. I toned these down a little for realism – he’d look like a caricature in this style with shaggy brows and a big moustache.
His hair (according to the wiki) is said to be long enough to reach his collar, so I gave him a style I thought fit that and the rest of his image.
I gave him a harp – I haven’t seen any art of him with a harp. There’s plenty of him juggling, or with a flute or knives, but not the harp! I really couldn’t be bothered making it look better though.
I always do this to myself, start something and then get sick of it and want something new!
Thom’s cloak is described as being more patches than cloak and with patches of more colours than one could imagine. It doesn’t say explicitly that the patches have patterns, but I liked it how other artists portrayed them with patterns so I did too.
Don’t even look at the pants. I was SO DONE by then that I just scribbled some black stuff and called it a day.
Half the reason I gave him a waistcoat was because I didn’t want to paint a belt and shirt (because I hate painting fabric!)
All of the patterns on the cloak, waistcoat, harp, and lace are texture overlays. I used a stitching brush for the stitches around the patches.
I’m just not thrilled with this one, and that’s really annoying because Thom is a cool character. I'll probably spot a million errors I want to fix, but I'll fix them in the sigil version if I do.
So! I’ve just got the sigil version of Thom to do, and I probably won’t paint a variant for that because I’ve gone and burnt myself out lol. I’ll recharge a bit before deciding on who to paint next.
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I heard a whiff of Wheel of Time news the other week (could it be? Someone is finally putting the series into live action?), which always stirs some nostalgia in me. I could also do with a good drawing project, so I thought I would delve back in to the Wheel of Time chapter project I started what feels like eons ago. The challenge was to draw something from every chapter, and there are 52 chapters + prologue in this book so if I can get through all of them I will be pleased as punch.
To ease into things here is a quick sketch in Procreate of everyone’s favourite gleeman, Thom Merrilin.