Jenny Dolfen

Three is company: Sam, Pippin, Frodo

There's one thing I owe to the Peter Jackson movies: They made me appreciate that the Hobbits could look different. I grew up with the cartoony Bakshi version, of which I mercifully managed to forget almost everything, except that Sam's nose was as big as his feet, and that the other three were completely indistinguishable. Through my early years, I drew them accordingly. I still barely see them very differently when I read the book, but at least I can make an effort now! 

A Patreon-relat...

Three is company: Pippin (or Frodo)

As a left-hander, I always draw and paint from right to left, of course. I remember being puzzled when I read in art guidebooks that you should always work from left to right and thought it had something to do with brain-wiring or Western culture or whatever, until I realised it had to do with the black graphite smear on my left hand, which immediately grew less as I ignored the advice. ;) 

Edit: I think he's Frodo after all - the middle one rummaging in his bag looks much more like Pippi...

"Three is company" - first step (~5 minutes in)

Sommer recently asked: "Do you lay down your idea on the toned paper with a regular drawing pencil first or do you use the red/white/charcoal pencils from the beginning?"

I thought I'd go into that a bit, and this turned into a full early-stages musing session, so here goes!

Coloured pencil on toned paper is a great way for me to do complex, whimsical or emotional scenes that look great without committing me to two weeks of work, as most of my watercolours do (mainly because I can rarely...

Caranthir sketch

For those of you who asked about Caranthir! :)

Sepia and white pencil on grey-toned sketchbook paper. <3 I love this combination!

Stupid little video

Maybe you saw on Social media that I'm going to do a "SavvySaturday", sharing artsy tips. I made a little video that I plan to post next week, and got totally carried away with silent film music. XD

So, in case you ever tried painting with dry watercolour straight from the pan, got very little pigment out of it, and then the next time you dipped your brush in it, it was way too much - this is why!

Maybe Nerdanel... and sketchbook musings

Breaking in a new sketchbook (you can never have enough half-full sketchbooks... cough). I've finally found one with toned paper! 

One of the few sketchbooks of mine (among the two dozen or so that litter my home, and that's just counting the ones that are full) that I still largely like is one I bound myself, also with toned paper*, which seems to make me do good work in short time. (The other good one is the one in which I did all my early Hannibal paintings**, but since each of those p...

"Until the world is broken..." matted prints!

Prints now in my Etsy shop! I have four of these with remarqued mat. :)

Don't forget your coupon code!

https://www.etsy.com/shop/JennyDolfenArt?coupon=FRODO21

Until the world is broken and remade

For those of you who asked for Elros and Elrond - it turned out much more heartbreaking than any of us bargained for. =(

A metaphorical moment more than anything else, if the twins had met again before their fate separated them until the world is broken and remade. 

Red and white pencil on Clairefontaine toned paper. You may feel reminded (at least where technique is concerned) of several works that Donato Giancola has been turning out lately - I hugely admire his art and the techni...

Mathos - digital sketch

A quick digital scribble of Mathos Tyrsgard, my Pathfinder paladin character I talked about. Still fiddling with the layout and not quite sure what those birds are. 

His face is extremely loosely modelled on British actor Idris Elba.

Crystal fox

Suggestion box fox! :) 

Thanks for suggesting it, Tanya! I actually wanted to draw these since the first trailer. 

As you can see, I tried my hand at some gouache again! I'm quite happy with the outcome, though I seriously need to do this on cold-pressed paper. My little sketchbook isn't up to this. 

101 days of art!

Time to pat myself on the back a little after 101 consecutive days of producing at least something - either sketching or drawing or painting! \o/

Have yourself a sweet little Maedhros. :) 

I forgot that my sketchbook won't fill quite *that* fast, as I have some other image ideas and projects that I want to work on too. The next one is something I haven't done in years: An RPG character of mine! Plus an excuse to draw cool gnarled trees and rocks and standing stones and flocks of bir...

"You'll stand with me" - steps

Here's picking up from the last set of steps I posted! 

1) I re-wet the area around the lightsabres to add some more colour to them, in a fuzzy sort of way.

2) Laying down the colours/darks for Ren's clothes. 

3) Detailing Rey and Ren's clothes. I was getting darker and darker again with this one and was this close to just deciding it wasn't worth finishing...

4)... but gouache brought back the oomph. For Star Wars, I find that a more comicky gouachy look w...

"You'll stand with me"

"I know that when the time comes, you'll be the one to turn. You'll stand with me, Rey."

Or maybe yet the other way round...

Watercolour and gouache on Saunders Waterford paper, 25x15 cm.

I've been taking photos again, I'll upload them as a little walkthrough in a minute!

Steps: Throne room fight

Here's how I approached the throne room colours: 

1. Start with the blue glow around Rey' lightsabre, reflecting off her as well as Kylo Ren a bit.

2. Lay a flat red glow across the whole piece. It was extremely helpful that the paper, Bockingford, allows a great deal of lifting off colour even after a few minutes, which gave me a great amount of control over the whites here. 

3. Adding darker reds and textures, going through the piece in trailing lines to cut across the...

Enamel pin suggestions?

Every artist (it seems) is doing enamel pins right now - they seem to be totally the thing! I love enamel pins, I have a bag that weighs about a ton because of all those pins on it. The reason why I haven't done one yet is - I can't decide what I would do!

The most obvious thing would be a portrait/bust of a handsome red-haired guy, obviously, or maybe someone on a horse (though that seems pretty hard to do). Any thoughts? What would you like to see as a pin? It's one of those moments whe...

Throne room - lineart

I decided to cut off a lot of space top and bottom - somehow, those legs killed much of the movement! 

I have such trouble capturing Rey! I have known for some time that I have some sort of face-blindness, and Rey just totally defeats me. Kylo Ren, on the other hand, is like prosopagnosia therapy, hee.

Throne room (refined sketch)

A bit more work on this (so probably no sketch today), next stop: pencils! I want to do something very chaotic and wild with the background... and will probably keep the guards as red silhouettes, with Rey and Ren being the only things that will actually end up refined.

Throne room (Spoiler for SW:TLJ!)

This was Paul's suggestion, but I had been planning this for two weeks (since leaving the cinema. Possibly earlier). Kylo Ren and Rey teaming up to fight Snoke's guards, those colours, those dynamics, sparks raining down in the red surroundings - that was so incredibly awesome that I screamed "Holy ****" in the cinema. Thankfully, I did it while it was noisy enough so nobody heard. As opposed to the annoying kid sitting behind us who, when Admiral Holdo's cruiser hit the Supremacy amid ...

Suggested sketch: Finrod and Dwarves

Here's Dina's suggestion: a sketch of Finrod and Dwarven architects planning Nargothrond. 

Keep the suggestions coming, over in the suggestion box - January's got thirty more days! ;)

Suggestion box January

(Swiped this idea from Franziska.) I'm in need of ideas for my daily drawings (I resorted to painting a Porg last night, which looked totally indignant with me and the world), so save me from indignant drawing sujets! 

The suggestions can be anything that might make a good sketchbook page. I can't promise I'll do any given idea, but if I pick one of your suggestions, I'll post it, even if it turn...

Happy New Year (with goodies)

I hope you had a great start of the new year! Ours was great - one of my cherished traditions is role-playing into the New Year, and this time, we did it with the kids. They actually managed to sit through a five-hour session (interrupted by raclette and very briefly by poking our noses out of the door at midnight, but it was raining to heavily that we quickly fled inside again). Judging by how relatively few fireworks we heard last night, half the village did the same, so they'll probably be bu...

Gouache sketch - fox

Okay, the first gouache attempt was so pitiful (Fingon is still mad at me) that I decided to do another one today - this time with photo reference. I think the idea of doing little gouache studies is a good one; I just need thicker paper - this one definitely wasn't up to it. Hm. Good thing that I have so many impulse purchases lying around here; I ought to find a sketchbook that's hefty enough. Weird thought - if I keep this up, I'll fill ten to twelve sketchbooks a year. That's a bit ...

Another year almost over...

It's been a year that has been frustrating through much of it, and then turned very satisfying towards the end. I consider myself extremely lucky that you have all stuck me with me (or joined me!) throughout this year. Here's to 2018! 

I'd like to share with you some wonderful thoughts of Neil Gaiman, which I came across yesterday, and which I'll print out and hang over my desk (to join those of Ian McCaig and Ira Glass).

Be kind to yourself in the year ahead. 2017-12-30 09:02:04 +0000 UTC View Post

Winter hunt finished

Sorry for not updating - I had the feeling that the last two days it would have been "Look! Another half horse done!" and I figured I'd give you the full thing, but that, again, took longer than I thought. 

Still, I've come to like this way of working. A piece takes me around ten days, but these ten days still are constant work. (Little, but constant.) Much better than only paint "when I have time" and churn out five pieces in two weeks because I feel I need to catch up!

Extra point...

Fingon and his bird

(I don't dare call it any actual kind of bird, so he's just "Fingon's bird", haha.) Though he does look eaglish. 

We're off to see The Last Jedi in less than a hour, hooray! 

I'm loving these effects of mixing grey out of transparent Ochre and Ultramarine blue, but just by setting one of the two on the paper and then dropping the other into it, to mix in some places but to keep separate in others. Artist Jane Blundell has a grey mixed from Burnt Sienna and Ultramarine,...

Just a little new step, and trying something new

Not much progress - sitting is painful, since I managed to slip on our grimy (wooden) terrace today and fell squarely onto my back. Must have looked pretty Tom&Jerry. (Hubby, last week: "The terrace is really slippery. We ought to clean it sometime." Me, last week: "Yeah... sometime. After all this rain.")

For the figures, I've tried something I haven't done in about fifteen years: Foregoing contrast. I've had it ingrained into me from my years at comics and concept art forums that every p...

Next wip, and an update from Patreon

My feet get cold when I look at it - which is good! ;)

Good news from that fees thing I told you about last week! There's been massive protests from creators because the 1$ fees would have gone up disproportionally, and Patreon has listened. It seems some sort of change is in the works, but they're not going to let it fall so heavily on the small patrons. Fortunately, I only lost one, but it's still s...

First layer of snow

... I mean, paint. 

Had another of those masking fluid moments again today that seem to occur every two years (namely, every time I want to use masking fluid), in which I find that all my masking fluid has either gone bad or dried to solid rubber. I managed to paint around the treetops up there, but it wasn't really the smartest of moves... 

Winter hunt - lineart

Trust me to make a totally Christmas card-worthy piece that will just not make it in time for Christmas! 

Well. I present my seasons greetings card for 2018!

Fingon still happy but not quite loony. Sorry for all of those on #teamgrin. ;) I just didn't feel right. 

Happy little Fingon

Not sure if I'll keep his grin. He looks a bit too much like a little boy with a kite. XD