#silm abridged art

[adwendoodles]

After 10,000 years... I finally finished it.... The Noldor family tree...

Tumblr murdered the quality but if you right click then ‘view image’ it should allow for a bit of zoom while i try and figure out how to fix the quality...

[adwendoodles]

the feanorians for my ridiculous self indulgent project. whats up with caranthir? excellent question i call it “caranthir discovers fashion and the artist remembers hats exist”

the random random thoughts:

- feanor i feel like ive seen so many designs for that this one just stuck into my head as The Look for him... very generic... but also... its His Look

- i feel like nerdanel is usually seen in working clothes but she’s also the high princess of the noldor (if they do that sort of thing... ?) so. fancy clothes on occasion and fancy circles and combs

- maedhros i actually did three looks for hahaha. im not really happy with him... in my hc maedhros is very pretty in that way photoshoped models are; too symmetric, too sculpted, a bit androgynous... but my art isn’t good enough to capture that ahahhaha so i went this route instead

- maglor i am a bit confused as to how i ended up with this design for him??? he almost reminds me more of caranthir and caranthir of him... ???? also yes i did give him a proto chest window

- celegorm is “the artist remembers earrings exist” hahaha. okay no but i do think he might have jewelry/accessories that came from his hunts. the necklace is actually a skull from a small animal

- huan is a feanorian and i refuse to exclude him. one time i read a fic where he searches for celegorm in the halls of mandos and it slew me and made me low-key ship maia!huan with celegorm which i still feel weird about but if thingol can marry his bird wife celegorm can have a tragic romance with his dog buddy

edit: found the fic and it’s still great

- caranthir i kinda went crazy on... im sorry not sorry... i like the fanon that he works with textiles like miriel, so echoed bits of her design in his

- curufin i literally traced over feanors design and altered details ahahahahahahhaha .... so sorry curufin... you deserved more jewelry but i did you first and thus hadn’t remembered jewelry existed

- amrod (twin tails) might be one of my favorites here... but his and amras design is inspired by this art by egobarri over on DA... such a good design... they have matching earrings on opposite ears because im cliche

EVEN MORE RANDOM RANDOM THOUGHTS

- accidentally, everyone except maedhros, maglor, and celegorm (and huan) has a bit of feanorian red on them. is this a sign that in later years feanor’s break from his family further influenced their style choices??? who knows!!!

- everyone but nerdanel and huan have feanorian stars somewhere on them

- i wish i had given maglor and/or caranthir curlier hair... hindsight...

[adwendoodles]

Finally reached the Fingolfinians! Did I do the alternating skin colors on purpose?? yes because patterns please me no

thoughty thoughts

- i did fingolfin before didn’t i??? my memory is bad

- anaire!!! her hair is inspired by merida’s mom from brave and i feel like they might have similar vibes in general... i drew her in fancy clothes for some reason?? really most of them are in fancy clothes but her specifically is fancy. there should be like three different fabrics in just the tiny bit i drew. idk what their names are (rip my fashion knowledge) but they’re there!

- fingon!!! fingon is my absolute favorite character to draw because 1. he’s my second favorite character in the silmarillion 2. i feel compelled to make my favorite character very Pretty and while i still feel the need to do that it doesn’t trigger crippling anxiety in me. anyway out of everyone here he’s closest to how i actually imagine he looks like. like all of these except argon are pretty close to how i imagine them but fingon specifically. am i the only one who feels like he very often has a smile just three degrees shy of being a challenging smirk?

-  turgon is actually based on a rejected design for caranthir lmao. i gave him this cool hat thing based on a crown before i decided i would only give the ‘high princes(s)’ crowns for some arbitrary reason... anyway when i actually linearted the thing it looked kinda terrible so i scraped it and his circlet is all that remains

- i gave aredhel robin hood’s hat because no one is here to stop my impulses. i made the feather red for some bizarre reason... not sure how much i like it now... her outfit was 100% inspired by this fanart from azaisya... .tis a great hunting outfit me feels... also it fits the robin hood vibe lmao

(am i saying aredhel steals from the rich to give to the poor? no cuz she’s royalty she is the rich. also, it’s valinor. depending on your headcanon no one is poor)

- argon i have no idea what happened and im still baffled by his design. clearly he’s at some party...??? i have no mental image for him so i googled his name and squinted at designs until i came up with something and in hindsight maybe i should just go back to my pinterest board full of byzantine clothing. anyway he has braids ala fingon, a feather ala aredhel, and... ....... turgon’s.... internal attitude?

....

yeah

- anyway!!! nearly done with the valinor crowd! i only have to draw spouces and gen 3 kids (gen 0 being finwe and co) and i will finally move onto the beleriand group... yay!

[adwendoodles]

The Finarfinians (Arafinwions?) for my self indulgent ridiculous pet project. Also known as “blended golden-silver hair when only doing flat colors howst??” i’m sorry galadriel

thoughty thoughts~

- Earwen!! Such an interesting character. Ngl reading the finarfinian family interactions makes up some of my favorite fics that I’ve read since joining the silm fandom. They’re just very interesting! Like Arafinwe’s reluctance to leave, how Earwen must have reacted to the kinslaying and the fact that her kids (and husband at first) went on despite all of it...

Anyway. Her hair is like some bizarre and ultimately failed attempt to draw chinese-inspired hair jewelry before I realized that, wait, the vibe I get from the Teleri is that they don’t use hair jewelry, that fits Nargothrond or Gondolin (or Tirion itself) much better because noldor like the bling-bling, so I nerfed her outfit and jewelry several times. Still sad about the dress ah...

- I actually drew Galadriel first and then did Finrod, and I tried to draw them looking similar because... that’s kinda the vibe I get? The most objectively beautiful grandchildren of Finwe, and while that could just mean that they are both beautiful in different ways... I think they actually closely resemble each other

His outfit has a bunch of tiny squiggly details that are probably either  embroidery (lame) or the elf equivalent of swarovski crystals (much more Finrod). He also has ear cover jewelry you can barely see lmao

- Aegnor! I still can’t remember who is who with him and Angrod but I remember that Aegnor, specifically, is described as sharing Galadriel and Finrod’s gold hair so I gave him that. Ordinarily I imagine that he and Angrod resemble each other as much as Finrod and Galadriel do... but this is for fun and the best part about the Finarfinians is that there’s now three groups worth of basic skin/hair colors to mess around with

- Angrod. I feel like he probably has golden hair (the golden children of Arafinwe and all that) but my mind was like ‘give him Earwen’s hair’ so I did. No, I don’t know what’s going on with his outfit either. The pentand has a swan engraving though.

- Galadriel! I’ve known from the moment I started this project that I wanted to give her a braid crown, cuz this girl is a queen. Also a slight and possibly too subtle reference to her athleticism, because I hc that she does a braid-crown for all sports events and such. Her outfit is probably the most noldor of them all, which is amusing, but it does have the little swan-wings motif (probably too subtle again, alas)

Her hair was so annoying because I didn’t want to break the style I started for this project any more than photoshop glitching so badly I installed another art program did. In the end I just took a nearly-white color and used it as highlights, because Earwen’s haircolor is a bit more gray than silver and it just made her look like she was going gray.

- I was introduced to Orodreth as Angrod’s son so *cough* sorry published silmarillion *cough* I’m keeping it that way

[adwendoodles]

The gen 3 kids and their parents, plus a bonus Amaire!

thoughty thoughts

- I have no idea how i ended up with orodreth like this. actually my all time favorite orodreth fanart that i cAN’T FIND to link had this cool bob and silver hair, which might be what influenced to make angrod with silver hair? anyway im certain that finrod’s nephew is always only slightly less blitzed out in jewelry and sparkly clothes than his uncle is

edit: arofili found it!!!! thank you so much! please go bask in the glory of elyksina ‘s designs for the nargothrond gang they are STILL among my favorite designs for these characters they’re just so excellent??? could not top them if i tried and im not even gonna try imma just bask

- tolkien said absolutely nothing about eldalote except her name, but in my search for like... any... canon details at all.... i found out she also has a sindar name, so it’s likely that she actually followed her husband and kid to beleriand! at least that’s how i chose to interpret it. her dress i found on google and its so BEAUTIFUL like goodness i want that. idk about her hair tho. i made it brown cuz she’s a typical noldor with dark hair light skin dark gray eyes

- i dont really reblog anything about racism in fandoms because tumblr is my safe space i scroll through when im sad and racism just makes me depressed lmao. but i do read it so i deliberately made eol white. anyway. the sindar apparently look very like the noldor except their eyes dont glow so tbh i recycled their skin tone bc im too unimaginative to create many variations... he’s also somehow related to elu thingol, but also his hair is dark (like the typical sindar)... i compromised by giving him dark gray hair. he’s wearing armor cuz he seems like the type of paranoid dude to wear that often

- maeglin i followed the canon description of black hair white skin dark eyes. maeglin gives me complicated feelings hah. anyway. i gave him the noldor bg bc i think he’d identify with the noldor more, despite (or perhaps because) of what happened with his dad. 

- celeborn is my favorite spouse ever. we know just as little about him as about any of the other spouses but he also married galadriel and im like, really into some fandom portrayals. i love him. silver hair ftw. also he’s related to elu like galadriel so they actually ended up looking... very similar? especially cuz i drew galadriel similar to earwen. anyway in the movies he’s got this necklace thing that i didn’t add but i hc that galadriel made for him.

- celebriaaan. my girl!!! her hair is 100% inspired by some fanart i’ve seen. that big bushy vanyar hair with silver instead of gold is GREAT. she, unlike the rest of these kids, i hc as identifying with the sindar side of her heritage... i mean at that point, if we just go by movie hair, galadriel was trying to integrate into sindar culture as well so. (her circlet was totally a gift from galadriel as well)

- celebrimbor’s mom is an inside joke with myself. tolkien didn’t even bother to name her (for shame), so i was like, imma see just how many female spouses tolkien didn’t name by putting a little shrug emoji instead of their face. now i just feel like its playing into it??? i might just actually try and draw her and just leave her name as the shrug emoji instead...

- celebrimbor looks like  CHILD lmao. i might update his design later. anyway i blame viery plus for his design.

- elenwe! i saw someone with these really tight blond curls... it might have been rupaul... and i knew she had to have them. her clothes are the weird draping/gold thing i have for the vanyar...?

- idril i had SUCH trouble with. i knew she had to inherit elenwe’s hair, and the fact that that’s so specified makes me think she resembles turgon otherwise, so i followed that. i had to re-do her hairstyle twice and it still kinda bothers me... i like the flower accessory tho

- amaire!!! i wasn’t going to draw her and then i was like, lets do it anyway, so i did. her hair and clothes i based on some random google images of greek clothing and hair... she has a cute hat bc i need to draw more hats. also hair jewelry and ear jewelry bc this girl dated FINROD she must have SOME appreciation for the shiny

[adwendoodles]

Finally finished the Doriath crowd (some of them, at least). So the Doriath royal family + Daeron, Beleg, and Mablung!

this is gonna be long... why did i decide to make so many characters. the count is up to 72 now. 72. And I might add others like Oropher and Thranduil and Voronwë if, you know, i I feel like torturing myself

anyway

- i was honestly not going to include daeron, beleg, or mablung and then i realized that 80% of the reason im making this is so my friend, who is constantly lost about the silmarillion (yet valiantly tries to read the fanfics i rec) has a reference and even though these are mostly minor characters i was like... oh well time to draw them. i still quite enjoy the detail that the sindar look a lot like the noldor and most of them have black/brown hair so i gave him that + the typical doriath skin color bc im an idiot and forgot to add more genetic diversity to doriath aljdlkfdslkfds

- why does everyone draw beleg with silver hair????? i realize it might be 90% not caring that silver hair is usually a trait of thingol’s kin or i mean, he might also have silver hair on his own, but if that got described in the silm i completely didnt process it and so now im just so curious. is it canon?? is it fanon??? is it fanon so fanon it might be canon??? pls enlighten me

anyway regardless of the reason im really into silver haired beleg lmao. i went ahead and did it. he’s actually reffed from a real person for once! isn’t this guy just so hot??? i dont think i meant him to be beleg when i pinned the image but when i was trying to figure out how to draw beleg i saw it and i was just like!!!  so i follow my thirsty brain instincts

*disney voice* now all of china knows you can’t ref

- mablung i have like zero mental image for but i finally realized i could like... use more than one skin color for doriath.... ..... ...... so i went ahead and did it. kinda inspired by a google search of his name tbh??? in related news if anyone is up for hearing me gush about dakkun39′s silm art at them for 30 minutes hit me up bc these were some of the first silm fanarts i ever saw and they STAYED WITH ME i LOVE the piece with galariel at the first kinslaying like THAT SHAPED HOW I SAW THAT ENTIRE SCENE and the first time i saw it i had no idea who any of these people were i LOVE IT 100% that’s my entire galadriel look headcanon. im also quite fond of their haleth and all of their maedhros pieces are amazing as well

*cough* moving on

- i’ve done thingol melian and luthien so moving onto beren... uhhh idk about beren im always torn between ‘scruffy forest man hasn’t bathed in a decade’ and ‘handsome rugged dude’ and i landed far away from both but im okay with this?? the real question is why he’s blond. normally i picture him with dark hair?? i think i should blame the internet for telling me his hair in canon is blond cuz i... do... try and respect canon... usually.....

- i really love this one hc that dior the fair looks like beren hahaha. he looks enough like luthien that ppl can praise the resemblance, but truthfully he much more closely resembles Young Handsome Lordling Beren. i feel like i messed up his eyes but i’ll... fix that in post production

- nimloth!!! another person i have no headcanon for except “dark hair question mark” i used the opportunity to try and draw a cool headdress i saw on pinterest... with dubious results.... also curious that she wears a crown/headdress and dior doesn’t...

- elured and elurin!!! i had to draw them as kids for obvious reasons :’c they’re wearing simple child clothing i guess, and have silver hair bc they’re elu’s heirs so im guessing that to ear that title when they’re like, 6, they must resemble great grandpa a bit (also im quite fond of the silver haired elu twins hc)

- conversely, elwing resembles melian! not actually a headcanon i had but it really worked here???? also i like that out of all of melian’s descendents besides luthien (who is always an outlier and should not be counted), elwing is the one that actually uses maia-adjacent powers (i do like the idea that the power to transform was somewhere inside of her, and ulmo helped bring it out. im not sure a normal elf would survive literally turning into a bird).

i actually drew like, 4 different versions of elwing. there’s child elwing, adult elwing with nauglimir, bird elwing, and adult elwing without nauglimir

in related news, i now need to draw earendil with the silmaril forehead lamp to make everything consistent

- the one thing i’ve learned from this is that even with refs i cant draw kids ahahahah... something to practice on i guess

- also in case anyone was curious ive now finished 57 characters. the only remaining elves that are currently on the list (aka: the house of finwe. tho knowing me im prooobably gonna add voronwe... *sigh*) are gil-galad, gwindor (boyfriends and spouses count as part of the house, right? of course they do thats why i drew them), arwen, elladan and ellohir (mostly bc im still debating whether to give them the noldor background color or the sindar bg color), and glorfindel and echtelion who are not part of the house of finwe (tho they might be depending on the headcanon) but are relevant enough imma draw them anyway. the remaining rest are humans (me, biased?? nooooo)

[adwendoodles]

Ingwe, Finwe, and Olwe for a pet project of mine that, actually, has nothing to do with Ingwe or Olwe and they shouldn’t be here but they are because I’m very impulsive

the pet project is actually called “try and draw the entire Noldor Royal Family Tree bc 1. you can have visual aids for trying to explain the silmarillion to your uncultured buddies and 2. if you have designs already made you wont be crippled by indecision every time you try and draw anyone from the silmarillion”

and that being explained... why are olwe and ingwe here????!!! they really have no reason to be here! olwe maybe but ingwe??? i dont even know his exact relation to Indis.... smh

random random thoughts:

- I once saw a post/fic that described the Vanyar Aesthetic as gold on gold on gold and my mind went ‘gold hair gold skin gold clothes’. if i bother to add shading to this i’ll include ‘gold eyeshadow’

- finwe’s design is a mismash of various fanarts + that crown that i did for the other finwe thing... i mostly squinted at him and tried to picture what features this or that descendant will steal. his hairstyle was directly inspired by this one amazing fanart of him and miriel that, unfortunately, i’m unable to find now to link (i just saw it while scrolling through ‘miriel and finwe’ google images search)

- i once saw this design of luthien by the amazing tosquinha and my entire headcanon on her design zeroed in on that and refused to budge and because of that i now have to draw the entire sindar/teleri inspired by that even tho i am nowhere CLOSE to the sheer magnificence of that art.... but someday... someday when im not afraid of colors.... anyway his crown is a swan and so are his robe clasps

... maybe i should draw everyone else in a crazy color scheme... i wont... but i should... just for the lols....

- this is totally inspired in part by choistar’s own cool timeline that i dont believe they have a tumblr for because i could only find it on pinterest but anyway. im trying not to copy their designs hahah... hah... .... its so hard they’re so good everyone’s designs are so good why did i start doing this my art skill isn’t op enough

- if i ever complete this i shall post it as part of The Silmarillion Abriged ft. Noldor Royal Family

[adwendoodles]

the children of indis for my increasingly ridiculous and self indulgent project

random random ramblings

the more i do these character portraits the more i realize this isn’t actually how i picture them, just my attempts at creating a range of faces that i can place to names that dont all look exactly like one another because 1. that’s boring and 2. doesn’t actually help me when im trying to distinguish between two characters with similar names

- “not actually how i picture them” i say, except for findis! except for her bizzare hat that im vaguely ashamed to admit is a parody of rihanna’s parody of a pope hat from the MET gala a few years ago, she turned out preeety much how i picture her?

- i put her bg in the vanyarin color bc i think she’s the only one of these kids that seems to prefer being a vanyar than a noldor...

- honestly, as an intercultural/interracial/inter”whatever modern cultural distinction/parallel you want to add” person myself, the idea of ‘choosing’ one culture over the other that is sometimes seen with findis and the other descendents of indis is ...complicated to me, because on one hand its not that simple, but on the other hand, i do understand preferring one culture over the other, even if that culture isn’t the one you were raised “inside of”, and identifying with that culture to the point where you don’t feel connected to the other culture at all or only tangentially...

- anyway. that random rambling aside, that’s why i gave her the vanyar bg color

- i tried to make fingolfin look similar to finwe and feanor. i tried to make him look prideful because he is described being the most prideful of... i dont think it was the house of finwe but it MIGHT have been the house of finwe. anyway. dunno if i succeeded

- lalwen i tried to make her look happy and smiling bc laughter is literally her name. her clothing is actually this one cool cape thing i found on pinterest. also i think her hair is actually straight (like finwe’s) but here she’s dressed up all nice and who doesn’t love stylized curls

- same thing for finarfin re: hair. actually the biggest annoyance i’ve found while drawing these things is that they all face front??? and?? how ??? to hair??? from front??? while using different hairstyles???

- it especially doesn’t help that because of my headcanon that hair is ~special~ to elves i gave them all long hair... i stg... i might change the headcanon to “only elves who went to valinor” just so i can draw some short hair

- i realize that im being ridiculous and this is my self indulgent project and i can give anyone whatever hair style i want like im not even giving them the faces i imagine while reading fics partially cuz my skill aint that high rip maitimo BUT STILL

- *bill wurtz at the end of “history of humanity” video* do people actually read these ramblings?

- i mean i started ranting into the void for the fun of it and will probably continue to do so but now im curious

[adwendoodles]

Indis, Finwe, and Miriel for my ridiculous pet project. 7 out of 66 people down... hah... hahaha....

- I think Indis turned out the cutest of ANYONE i’ve drawn so far and I’m so pleased by everything about her!! ...even if her bangs are weird.... .... ... BUT EVERYTHING ELSE PLEASES ME. gold on gold on gold + some tunics you can’t quite see draping around her. i think vanyar might be way more casual and drape-y white fabric in their style than the blingy noldor with stiff clothing in a wide variety of dyes and patterns. tho saying “more casual than the noldor” does not, in of itself, imply casual (they just aren’t wearing their weight in jewelry every time there’s a party)

- miriel’s face is weird but i dont quite know why... anyway i feel like she’s always dressed Super Nice in a variety of styles. valinor’s pioneer fashionista right there. if she and indis were friends as i hc then indis’ drapey outfit was miriel studying vanyarin style...

- miriel’s clothing here is actually like six layers, each in a different color/fabric. kinda like uh... japanese imperial fashion in the late 1800s? i feel like as soon as noldor discovered fabric dyes they went crazy. actually there’s a fic like that isn’t there... where is it... if i find it i shall link it because that’s exactly what i hc happening

- i really do wonder about her hair guys. i really do. like i purposely used different shades of white/silver for miriel’s hair and teleri hair but i do wonder...

- also yes yes i did give indis a blue detail and miriel a red detail

- REALIZED JUST NOW THAT FINWE IS ONLY WEARING BLUE... smh... i’ve let you down feanor... 

- also realized that finwe’s crown looks bronze instead of gold... rip...

[adwendoodles]

Thingol, Melian, and Luthien!

i would like to thank the podcast ‘dungeons and daddies,’ which is not bdsm but rather a joke about dungeons and dragons, and also my friend who recommended that to me, because while trying to figure out what to do while listening to it i ended up doodling these three

anyway the usual thoughts:

- thingol i feel like ive seen enough fanart that some basics just got stuck in my head. i copied olwe’s same skin and hair color but thingol’s eyes are specifically described as gray so i have him very light blue/gray eyes. his outfit is... idk... tbh i searched for inspo and smashed together everything. his crown is me nearly going for thranduil’s antler crown, pausing and realizing that that crown is probably more silvan than sindar, and instead doing whatever this is

- melian!!!! i 100% credit her design to tosquinha again. here’s a good example of it, but honestly pls look through their entire art tag its amazing im just. raquel is /such/ an inspiration. anyway i tried to do the weird purple line things on her face bc heck yeah non-entirely elven looking maiar. admittedly i DO think melian took on a more elvish form, if only to better fit in slight with her subjects, but also... im fond of weird forms for ainur. her clothing is... idk... i truly dont know. i was going to give her something like a nightingale-style outfit and then i realized nightingales were BORING BIRDS so i went wild instead

- luthien!!! im really happy with how luthien turned out!!! again, i kinda scrolled through other art for luthien *cough* tosquinha‘s everything *cough* and i mashed details i liked (like her fringe) with details i got from her parents. originally she was going to follow thingol’s skin color bc tbh, that’s what i saw a lot, but it looked very very bland and suddenly she came alive when i gave her melian’s skin color so im sticking with it. i also realize that her dark hair seems to come from nowhere but you know what? she’s half maia and has magical hair it can be black if she wants to

also it amuses me partly bc im gonna stick with liv taylor for arwen so her skin color is proooobably going to white/light? and im bad at details but i remember that arwen was the evenstar bc she was a reflection of luthien’s beauty, but like if we’re going with sun/moon as stars then the sun is very bright and the moon is shiny and silver AND THIS GOT AWAY FROM ME BUT ANYWAY. that’s my bad explanation for attempted poetry

- belatedly realizes the clasps on luthiens hair were supposed to be gold. *sweats*.