Ecthelion and Glorfindel - the story so far - Part I
I'm now going to fullfill my threat/ promise to unleash some half-baked sketches of Ecthelion and Glorfindel to the world at large, a promise that I made a week ago in Tehta's livejournal.
Anyone who is not interested in a dozen headstudies of elves would do better to skip the rest of this post. For the rst of you, on with the show!
Sadly, these elf characters don't easily cooperate. As I have whined about more than once, I find elves very hard to do. The ideal elf should combine striking beauty with unique personality, which in itself is a somewhat of a contradiction, as a look in any fashion catalogue will prove. Furthermore, a certain amount if androgynity is fine, but a male elf should never look girly, again a fine line to balance. Lastly, the ideal elf should look deciedly non-human, not like the guy next door with glued-on ears. I am aware that I fail utterly in this aspect.
I have been working for quite some time on Ecthelion and Glorfindel, mostly in honour of Tehta's stories about them. They are originally Tolkien's characters, but I try to portrait them the way Tehta fleshes them out.
I have never shown these sketches around or put one of them on my Elfwood page because I haven't yet reached my goal with them. They all have some good points, traits I can develop further but I am not fully happy with anyone of them. There is still a lot of work to do until they come out like I imagine them. By the way, I have a lot more sketches of E & G. For this gallery I picked only the creme de la creme, or in other words the least embarrassing ones. The others are even more off the mark or tend to be repetitive.
5 x Glorfindel:
#1
Glorfindel the warrior, a sketch from 4/06
#2
A depressed Glorfindel with short hair, done 10/06, as he appears in Tehta's story 'The Quick and the Dead'. I like the construction of his face here, although it is more generic than individual. A sketch to keep in mind for further use.
#3
A sketch I used as a starting point for a number of other drawings. I like the overall type and expression here, although the drawing itself suffers from serious assymetry issues and parts of it are not really defined, like the mouth and brows.
#4
Based on #3, this time from a different angle. Face is too narrow. This is what happens if I doodle along, working from detail to detail without doing a sound base construction of the whole skull first. Still, nice expression. Done 9/06
#5
Gawd, this guy looks camp. I think I overdid the wavy hair. My most recent try.
Edit: on second thoughts, I'm not entirely sure this is Glorfindel at all. It might be Hildor the Sleazy Elf.
And lastly - a very Happy belated Birtday to Claudio! I hope your muses cooperate better than mine.
Anyone who is not interested in a dozen headstudies of elves would do better to skip the rest of this post. For the rst of you, on with the show!
Sadly, these elf characters don't easily cooperate. As I have whined about more than once, I find elves very hard to do. The ideal elf should combine striking beauty with unique personality, which in itself is a somewhat of a contradiction, as a look in any fashion catalogue will prove. Furthermore, a certain amount if androgynity is fine, but a male elf should never look girly, again a fine line to balance. Lastly, the ideal elf should look deciedly non-human, not like the guy next door with glued-on ears. I am aware that I fail utterly in this aspect.
I have been working for quite some time on Ecthelion and Glorfindel, mostly in honour of Tehta's stories about them. They are originally Tolkien's characters, but I try to portrait them the way Tehta fleshes them out.
I have never shown these sketches around or put one of them on my Elfwood page because I haven't yet reached my goal with them. They all have some good points, traits I can develop further but I am not fully happy with anyone of them. There is still a lot of work to do until they come out like I imagine them. By the way, I have a lot more sketches of E & G. For this gallery I picked only the creme de la creme, or in other words the least embarrassing ones. The others are even more off the mark or tend to be repetitive.
5 x Glorfindel:
#1
Glorfindel the warrior, a sketch from 4/06
#2
A depressed Glorfindel with short hair, done 10/06, as he appears in Tehta's story 'The Quick and the Dead'. I like the construction of his face here, although it is more generic than individual. A sketch to keep in mind for further use.
#3
A sketch I used as a starting point for a number of other drawings. I like the overall type and expression here, although the drawing itself suffers from serious assymetry issues and parts of it are not really defined, like the mouth and brows.
#4
Based on #3, this time from a different angle. Face is too narrow. This is what happens if I doodle along, working from detail to detail without doing a sound base construction of the whole skull first. Still, nice expression. Done 9/06
#5
Gawd, this guy looks camp. I think I overdid the wavy hair. My most recent try.
Edit: on second thoughts, I'm not entirely sure this is Glorfindel at all. It might be Hildor the Sleazy Elf.
And lastly - a very Happy belated Birtday to Claudio! I hope your muses cooperate better than mine.