Elf Costume

I finally got a picture of my Elvish costume. Thank you, "Rose", for needing a picture of it asap. :)

Only the dress is shown in this picture. My costume also included a white cape from an old costume and a full jewelry set I made.

I hope to do a photoshoot sometime with the full costume (if I can get my brother to man the camera...). In the meantime... just be happy with this, please. :)


EDIT: I now have several more pictures of this costume. Please see "My Masquerade Costume" [LINK]

Gandalf

The Lord of the Rings has, yet again, been dragged around wherever I go. This time around, I am reading it sloooowly, taking time to absorb all the depth and detail. Of course, I can never read such an awesome book without a strong itch to draw...

This drawing is based off of a black-and-white photograph. I drew it entirely freehand. Total time ran around 3 hours.

I have to say that this is the first drawing I have ever done that ACTUALLY looks like the person I am drawing.

I loved drawing the eyes. I love drawing eyes in general. This is the first time I've ever drawn baggy, wrinkly, squinting, strong, and kindly eyes. I'm not convinced I nailed it, but everyone says it looks like Gandalf.

THE BEARD. Ohhhh, the beard. Because of the scanner, you can't see all the light detail on the right hand side, but if you look at the left side you can see how I drew the beard. Line. After. Line. Scribble. After. Scribble.

The eyebrows were interesting but lots of fun. :)

My brother has claimed this picture for his bedroom. :) Its not usual for this particular brother to admit liking anything I make, so I take it as a good sign.

Let me take a moment to say that I don't like scanners!!!! The scanner lost half the detail. :(

EDIT: WORK IN PROGRESS PICTURES

(the picture I used for reference is actually a photo, not a drawing!)

(you can see more detail if you click this bottom picture. 'Cause it was taken with a camera, not a scanner.)

Aragorn

Aragorn! Aragorn and Sam are tied for my all time favorite Lord of the Rings character. The day after I finished my Gandalf drawing, my brother immediantly printed out a poster of Aragorn and told me that I must draw it.

So I did! The picture had strange lighting... It made Aragorn look angry rather than kingly. I tried fixing that in my drawing, but I messed up the eyes a bit. It looks like he's got a black eye... I've fixed that but haven't taken a photo of the fixed drawing. :P

I spent a good four hours on this drawing. I'm not sure, though; I lose track of time! Honestly, I get as caught up in artwork as I do when reading a book. And let me tell you-- I can never put books down. If I am interrupted, I go about doing everything distractedly, wondering what will happen... running off to read the first availble moment... Art is like that, too!!!

Here is the Work In Progress:

The chainmail. Oh, I have no words for the chain mail... I have no idea how to do it, and my usual technique of "just do it and see what happens" didn't yeild the results I wanted,

My facebook status at this point said: "Some people are able to patiently spend hours drawing realistic chainmail. After five minutes, I realized that I shall never count myself among their number. Hello, sqiggles."

L. reminded me that squiggles will never protect said drawing in the event of a spear thrust...

But squiggle-mail must Aragorn don, because this artist ain't got that kind of patience.

Messing around...

As you can see, I'm experimenting with different backgrounds, layouts, and HTML. I should be finished in a little bit!

The Old Look

The New Look

So, what do you think? I love Blogger's new "Template Designer" (only available in Blogger Draft). That combined with some computer-punching and alot of Google magic helped create the new look! I know that not all of the colors match... The background is a little busy (but hey! It's Rivendell!). I might make a new header... The current one was made for the size of the classical Blogger layout, not the new, bigger one!

I would like to point out a neat little bit of HTML I did... Do you see the little butterfly on the bottom left side of the screen? Yup, it does something. Click it! Isn't that cool? Took me long enough to figure it out...

Oooh, also check out the fun little pages I've got going on the top. They aren't done yet, but its a cool idea!

What internet browser do you have? The background looks different on Firefox and Explorer... but that might just be an issue with the Firefox on this computer (I need to fix the settings).