redbootsindoriath - Tumblr blog

[redbootsindoriath]

Apparently in my absence this post had its 1000-notes-iversary.

This time we get to see the culprit responsible for ruining our heroes' lives as well.

I've really missed you guys, by the way. I know I've said that already, but I'm serious. Once or twice this year I've been right on the brink of coming back but schedule stuff always keeps me from letting myself commit to that again, and that in turn has kept me from posting anything at all. But I've been in an unexpected drawing mood lately and so if I can get enough stuff to set up a queue we might pretend I'm back for a month or so sometime this year. Maybe. Hopefully. We'll see. No promises though. That's why I'm hiding this paragraph under the cut.

Transcription:

[Beren:] "Uhhh...barkeep...I think he's had enough now..." [Tolkien:] "No, I don't think he has...!"

[redbootsindoriath]

Merry Christmas!

And an early happy new year, since I'll be traveling at that time and won't be able to post anything. Sorry for the long disappearance. I wish I had some exciting excuse like being abducted by the fae or becoming a spy, but really I've just been going through a lot and haven't been drawing much. Here are a couple of fantasy style Klausen (or maybe the more widely recognized Krampi) by way of apology. I hope you all have been good this year.

[redbootsindoriath]

Happy Hobbit Day! (I almost forgot and it's technically well into the 23rd where I am right now, but I haven't gone to bed yet since waking up on the 22nd, so we'll say it counts.)

I think if Boromir had survived he should be allowed special permissions to go into the Shire to see his friends in their native habitat after everything is over.

Transcription:

Shire border security guard: "Sir I don't think you can bring those out with you..."

[redbootsindoriath]

Whichever anon sent me this today, thank you. There's no way you could have known, but a couple of days ago I suddenly and without warning lost a cat that I raised from the day he was born. When I saw this in my inbox I was confused at first, because what...checkmark...huh...but then I realized that it meant somebody had sent me something--out of the blue, just because--at a time that I really could use something good in my life, even something silly and fun. So, really, thank you. And green is my favorite "real" color, so having one of the checkmarks be green is pretty neat.

I've not really been able to draw anything worth anything lately, believe it or not, so here's the last picture I have of my Night Furry. He loved drives and walks, so earlier this summer on a road trip I took him to the top of the continental divide for a little hike.

(Yes, he's wearing a harness. He had an adventurous and independent temperament, so there was always a risk of him running off to explore someplace where he shouldn't go alone. I didn't just make him wear it because I'm a cruel and stifling cat butler.)

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I remembered today that if I want to continue my accidental Bilbo and the troll tradition I need to get cracking on a new drawing before I wake up in 2024 having missed my chance.

2023 Bert stole 2020 Bert’s hair and put it all over his face.  That’s why 2020 Bert was bald.  I just didn’t know that at the time.

[redbootsindoriath]

Okay so I didn’t remember that International Don’t Stab Your Best Friend Day was coming up until I was in the middle of a multi-day road trip, so here’s a comic I threw together in a huge rush while traveling in a moving vehicle and then took ages uploading on hotel wifi.

Transcription:

[Gurthang:] “Hey Túrin.” [Túrin:] “Yeah.” [Gurthang:] “I still can’t get over the fact that you literally murdered your best friend lol.” [Túrin:] “...” [Gurthang:] “Like how stupid do you have to be to do something like that, haha?” [Túrin:] “Oh yeah, you’re so right!  If only there had been someone there who could have said something!  A talking sword, for instance.” [Gurthang:] “Hey now, don’t pin this on me.” [Túrin:] “‘Dude stop, it’s just us, don’t freak out and stab anybody, even though it’s dark and you can’t see anything!’” [Elf 1:] “Is he okay?  Should we...do something about this?” [Elf 2:] “Absolutely not, I am not going near that situation.”

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Okay so I, like most Silmarillion fanartists, draw the Fëanorian twins as looking like...well...kids.  The book says they were the youngest in the family, and we all went, “Okay then they’re children.”  Which...yeah, that’s fair.  They really just seem to be chilling most of the time, which makes them seem a bit more innocent than the others.  But rather early on in my time doing Silm fanart, I thought about how funny if would be if they looked way older than their brothers.  But I never did anything with the idea.

Well, after finishing the Fëanorian Week drawings this year I was thinking about how I don’t really draw many Ñoldor due to not having headcanons about many of them.  And you guys know by this time that I love a bit of good angst, so I looked at the twins and said, “...ooh goody” and gave them a big old revamp.  (The drawing is of Amras and Maedhros, by the way.  For one thing, I’ve said before that I don’t like drawing identical twins. And for another…we’ll get into that in a second.)

Real quick, for those who aren’t super familiar with the different pieces of source material we have from Tolkien: in the Silmarillion both twins survive most of the story until they die together in the same battle near the end of the book. However, in one lone version of the story, Amrod dies when the ships are burned at Losgar.  Okay so.  That’s what’s been published, from here on out it’s just headcanon territory.

I think Amrod did die when the ships were burned.  Elves are spiritually a bit...different...so I expect twins have a particularly strong bond.  Amras wasn’t really able to handle the death of his brother, and went a little bit weird in the head.  He believed that half of his own soul died at Losgar, and half of Amrod’s still lived inside of him.  For the rest of his life, he answered to Amrod’s names, his own names, and Ambarussa, and signed his name and managed accounts as any of them as well.  He refused to acknowledge Amrod’s death and became irrational when any of his brothers mentioned it, so eventually they played along.  The story spreads that there were two of Fëanor’s sons that guard East Beleriand, but they are unsocial and rarely seen together.  People will report having seen one or the other of them but no one can tell the difference (in reality, this is because there is only one that is still alive.)

It’s uncertain who all knows about Amrod’s death, even among the Ñoldor that came with Fingolfin.  Most of the Sindar and Silvan elves don’t know.  Probably no humans know.  Anyone who does know doesn’t talk about it, and all everybody else knows is what they're told, and this is why in most versions of the story they both survive until Sirion.  For a while you’d see one or the other of them out hunting or going to war, and you just assumed the other was doing something else.  But then after Sirion no one ever saw either one.  Therefore, they obviously both died in the same battle.

Anyway, that’s just the version I came up with.  I don’t know if I’ll keep it, but it makes Amras a much more interesting character.  And that let me come up with a more visually interesting design, much older than I used to draw them.  Whether this was always the way they looked or a change that Amras went through after arriving in Middle Earth I haven’t decided yet.

[redbootsindoriath]

Starting tomorrow I’m not going to be able to draw for probably at least a week due to certain circumstances, which is a shame because I have a lot of ideas at the moment and I won’t be able to do anything with them.  However I also have a couple of drawings from the past few weeks that I might as well leave here before that happens, since I’ve already posted something today, so why not turn it into an art dump day?

Long story short, for this one, I was noticing that there are some consistent odd traits I give hobbits when I draw them.  And I said to myself, “I wonder what a hobbit would look like if I exaggerated all of those traits?”  And I ended up with this nightmare fuel.  There was great discussion between my friend and me over whether it’s cute, whether it would come into your house at night and steal your soul, or whether it’s a bit of both.

[redbootsindoriath]

Dungalef sure is a master of disguise 🤣💖

Apparently so! The only alternative is that Sauron is just kinda dumb.

[redbootsindoriath]

Oh.

Okay.

I’m honestly pretty surprised because this was supposed to just be a goofy little blog where I put nonsense stuff that maybe a few people would see and then move on.  Even the tagging system I use is because I didn’t care about the blog being easy to find.  However, unlike Fëanor, I don’t mind finding myself with more followers than I planned for.

Thank you all so much for being here, I hope I’m not disappointing anyone in any way, and to those of you who have been here since the beginning, thanks for your patience.

I’m hoping to do something big-ish for a proper celebration and thank you, but I didn’t really plan ahead much so it might be a while before I’m able to get something pulled together.  In the meantime, here’s a Third Age Finrod.

Again, thanks to all of you for being here and being so nice (whether I’m active or not), and for all of the wonderful comments, and for the reblogs that have spread my nonsense much further across the fanbase than I would ever have imagined.

Transcription:

[Fingolfin:] “Yeah well I never liked you anyway.  Idiot.”

[Mouth of Sauron:] “Is there anyone in this rout with authority to treat with me?” [Finrod:] “Of course!  I’m Dungalef and this is my good friend...uh...Nrogara Rassele.”

[redbootsindoriath]

Fëanorian Week 2023, Day 7: Fëanor and Nerdanel

You can see I gave up on the barely-there draping and went for full clothes in this one, mostly because Nerdanel would require more of it to get past Tumblr guidelines and I didn’t want to deal with all that.

And yes, I know the pose is almost identical to that Gwindor-and-Finduilas drawing I did that one time.  I’m not very creative when it comes to romantic stuff in drawings so we just have to take what we can get.

So...yeah, that’s the end of Fëanorian Week.  No more updates and excuses and explanations!  Huzzah!  I shall now disappear again for an undetermined length of time.

[redbootsindoriath]

Fëanorian Week 2023, Day 6: Ambarussa

This was actually the last of the drawings that I did because let me tell you, I struggled coming up with a composition for it.  For one thing, I really don’t like drawing two characters who are supposed to look identical in the same picture because it just seems repetitive and boring.  But more importantly, I wanted all (or at least most) of the drawings this year to mean something, and I just wasn’t getting that from any of the pre-sketches I’d made.  And then suddenly one night I realized that with the statues theme I’d set myself right up for yet another missing-half Ambarussa drawing, and from there on it was probably the easiest drawing of the week.

[redbootsindoriath]

Fëanorian Week 2023, Day 5: Curufin (or Celebrimbor, rather)

I have a similar problem with Curufin as I do with Caranthir: he’s just kind of there a lot of the time and kind of the only description of him is that he’s a mini version of Fëanor (and I was already going to be drawing Fëanor).  The one very notable thing he did was be father to Celebrimbor, who did plenty of notable things, including having a striking and vivid death (as opposed to Curufin who just got killed without detail or ceremony during the same battle as the other two C’s).  Therefore Celebrimbor gets to steal his dad’s day of Fëanorian Week.  Sorry, Curufin stans.

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Fëanorian Week 2023, Day 4: Caranthir

Oh, Caranthir, what do I do with you?  Every year I get to him and go “Oh crap not this guy again” because we really don’t know what his interests or motivations were.  I gave him short hair for visual variety (since his complexion doesn’t come across in monochrome stone) and left it with that.

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Fëanorian Week 2023, Day 3: Celegorm (and a horse)

“I’m not going to give Maglor an instrument” I said, “it would be too fragile” I said, and then I gave Celegorm a bow and arrows.  So we’re going to say that at least the arrows are bronze rods painted to resemble stone.

Also I’m pretty sure I haven’t drawn a horse in upwards of a year, so...yeah.  I apologize for the wonky structure and shading, especially on and behind the shoulders.

[redbootsindoriath]

Fëanorian Week 2023, Day 2: Maglor

It took me no fewer than half a dozen attempts to even get a sketch I liked for Maglor.  I kept trying to include an instrument into the composition of the piece but they all just looked so weird and out of place until I realized: stone statues don’t often have instruments in them because there are just too many fragile elements.  So I just left it out and finally it started coming together.

That being said, I originally raised the question of which instrument would be best in a Maglor drawing to my friend group before I had fully decided on a pose for him.  We were bouncing between panpipes and a lute when one said “maracas LOL” and I realized that I had just been granted the opportunity to create one of the most blursed images I’ve ever set to paper or tablet.  So here you go: Maracglor.

Just out of frame are Finrod on the steel pans and Fingon on bongos.

[redbootsindoriath]

Fëanorian Week 2023, Day 1: Maedhros

I’m so late with these I’m not even fashionably late.  But better late than never (cf. Fingolfin, probably, after finally getting to Middle Earth).

To anyone who went “Hmm I wonder if the theme this year is going to be classical sculpture?”, well, congratulations, you’re right, though I don’t know how you would have guessed that.  I was originally going to do something where I based each drawing off the meaning of the name, and since “Maitimo” means “well-shaped one” the first thing that came to mind was a Greek or Renaissance statue.  But after finishing it I decided that it had been a lot of fun and I might as well do the rest the same way.  And it sort of fit into the whole Fëanorian theme since Nerdanel is a sculptor.