Hey everyone! I have so much artwork from my freshman year that I'm going to have to break it up into a couple of posts. I'm pursuing a Graphic Design and Illustration major (it's a tough program to get in to and I won't know if I do until next spring) and freshman year was dedicated to the Foundations. These are the basic art classes that everyone in the art department has to take.

I finished this calligraphy piece several months ago but forgot to blog it-- it's J.R.R. Tolkien's beautiful poem Namárië from The Lord of the Rings. It is written in Quenya (the High Elvish language). On the left, the poem is written in our alphabet, and on the write, it is written in the Tengwar (Elvish) script.

The poem is a beautiful piece which the Lady Galadriel sings to Frodo when the Fellowship leaves Lothlorien to destroy the Ring. 

I didn't have space to fit the entire poem on my little sheet of paper board, so I just used the first stanza and stuck the final two lines (about farewells and finding Valinor) on at the end. 

The border was done entirely freehand using india ink and watercolors. I am pretty proud of it-- this was my first time making an Art Nouveau border, and I'm getting better at making celtic knots with decorative tips.

The heraldic device at the top is the symbol for Feanor, as designed by Tolkien himself. I thought this device would be fitting because not only is Feanor Galadriel's anscestor (if I have my genealogy straight), but it was mostly because of his family that the Elves were banished from Valinor-- and this poem is all about Galadriel's longing for Valinor when she thought she could not return, but nonetheless wished that Frodo may make it there one day. (Valinor is sort of like an Elvish heaven-- sort of, not really, but it's the best description I can come up with off the top of my head).

Here's the English version of the poem:

Ah! like gold fall the leaves in the wind,
long years numberless as the wings of trees!
The years have passed like swift draughts
of the sweet mead in lofty halls beyond the West,
beneath the blue vaults of Varda
wherein the stars tremble in the song of her voice, holy and queenly.

Who now shall refill the cup for me?

For now the Kindler, Varda, the Queen of the Stars,
from Mount Everwhite has uplifted her hands like clouds,
and all paths are drowned deep in shadow;
and out of a grey country darkness lies on the foaming waves between us,
and mist covers the jewels of Calacirya for ever.
Now lost, lost to those from the East is Valimar!
Farewell! Maybe thou shalt find Valimar.
Maybe even thou shalt find it. Farewell!

______________
For those of you complete Tolkienites, the title of this blog post ("Farewell") is not about me saying farewell to blogging or anything. I have one more crazy busy week of school left, and after that I will be taking a couple of days to just do nothing and not feel guilty about it (in other words, I will curl up on the hammock for two days and do nothing but devour some novels and drink lots of iced tea and catch up on TV shows before bed). After that, however, I will be working on some of the hundreds of creative projects that have been clanking around in my brain. :) 

It's so incredibly strange to think that I am almost done with high school. It's been a beautiful four years and I've learned and grown so much! For all of you still in school, when does your summer vacation begin?

And as they watched, upon the mound there came forth two slender shoots; and silence was over all the world in that hour, nor was there any other sound save the chanting of Yavanna. Under her song the saplings grew and became fair and tail, and came to flower; and thus there awoke in the world the Two Trees of Valinor. Of all things which Yavanna made they have most renown, and about their fate all the tales of the Elder Days are woven.

The one had leaves of dark green that beneath were as shining silver, and from each of his countless flowers a dew of silver light was ever falling, and the earth beneath was dappled with the shadow of his fluttering leaves. The other bore leaves of a young green like the new-opened beech; their edges were of glittering gold. Flowers swung upon her branches in clusters of yellow flame, formed each to a glowing horn that spilled a golden rain upon the ground; and from the blossom of that tree there came forth warmth and a great light. Telperion the one was called in Valinor, and Silpion, and Ninquelote, and many other names; but Laurelin the other was, and Malinalda, and Culurien, and many names in song beside.

In seven hours the glory of each tree waxed to full and waned again to naught; and each awoke once more to life an hour before the other ceased to shine. Thus in Valinor twice every day there came a gentle hour of softer light when both trees were faint and their gold and silver beams were mingled. Telperion was the elder of the trees and came first to full stature and to bloom; and that first hour in which he shone, the white glimmer of a silver dawn, the Valar reckoned not into the tale of hours, but named it the Opening Hour, and counted from it the ages of their reign in Valinor.

I began with a light pencil sketch. I didn't use any references-- which is usually a bad thing for me-- but in this case I did not want realistic trees, and so I let my stylistic tendencies go crazy.

Yes, the celtic knotwork in the tree branches was done entirely freehand and based off of nothing but a sharpie drawing I did in an old sketchbook.

I thought at first that I would simply outline the trees in a Chinese calligraphy style... but I've never managed to actually just make a simple picture. I always make things crazy complicated!








Each tree intertwines around either the Sun or the Moon and the white flowers are inspired by the White Tree of Gondor. I also painted things like the rain of light and the speckled ground.

On the bottom are two leaves (which I tried to draw as Tolkien described for each tree) along with the three Silmarils. I know they don't look like real gems, but I copied Tolkien's heraldic design for them.


Everything was done in gouache, either very very watered down, like watercolor, or very thick and opaque. I don't know if you can see it but there are many places with decorative opaque white dots...

Gouache works really well in a calligraphy dip pen, by the way. And the Tengwar writing at the top is the English mode and merely reads "Trees of Valinor."




Voila, there you go, I did a painting of the Two Trees of Valinor and it turned out nothing like what it appeared in my mind! I like the stylistic work, but I may try my hand at something more realistic...

Watercolors are a very handy paint because they are reusable once dry and you don't need to use a lot of paint to make a good painting. Plus, after a year of struggle, I'm starting to fall in love with watercolors and always like to have them handy.

But unless you are willing to shell out an exuberant amount of money on solid pan watercolors (or are willing to work with kiddie palettes seen in kindergartens around the world), watercolors aren't very portable.

Until you find an Altoids tin and a few hours for crafting. :)

The pictures are pretty self explanatory, so I'm not going to bore you with a bunch of rambling details and interesting tangents. Allons-y!


All you need is an Altoids tin, Mod Podge or another decoupage glue, paint sample cards (the kind with the glossy finish), and some watercolor tubes!



The height of the separators is up to you. 1 cm did the trick for me. It keeps the paint in but gives the tin some wriggle room so I can fit in mini paper, paper towel bits, pencil stubs, and mini paintbrushes, too.



At this point, I realized I needed more accordion-fold-paper-thingamabobbers, made a second one, and glued them together.


I then made some more separators so I could fit more colors into the tin. They are 1 cm wide and nestle into the accordion-fold paper..



Make sure that no paint can escape between the separators. Coat all the edges and corners with 2-3 thick layers of Mod Podge. Drying time between each layer will be exasperatingly long (about an hour) but it's worth it. For good measure, coat everything with Mod Podge just in case your paint card isn't glossy enough to be relatively waterproof.

As you can see from this picture, I hadn't properly sealed the separators and the red paint leaked.


These are colors that went into my tin. They don't have color names on them (they are from a set of watercolors my parents gave me when I was 10, and which I've only recently used. Notice how all the tubes are already breaking and paint is squishing and squashing all over the sides-- this is the perfect way to save old tubes of paint that would otherwise be hard to use!).



I wanted a wee container for holding water so that my kit could have everything I need for a tiny painting. After scavenging the house and testing out tiny plastic containers, I decided on the little plastic case that my brother's tiny scapular came in (far right).


There is still room to set some paper, paper towels, pencil stubs, and miniature paintbrushes on top of the watercolors.


Of course, it's not finished until you Mod Podge on a hand painted cover. And spelling watercolors the British way is a necessity. *nods gravely*

Overall, this is a fairly quick project that is absolutely free for people who have crafting materials hanging around. Well, the "curiously strong" mints aren't free, but you get to eat those so it's no biggie splurging a couple dollars. :)

If you attempt this project, please leave a comment! I'd love to check it out. :)


I made two tins, and the second was ultra miniature! I used one of those metal and plastic sleeves that allergy pills come in. The holes for the pills are the perfect size for a drop of paint. This one is so small that I can shove it in a pocket or tiny purse with no problem!

UPDATE:


After two years of dragging this tin around with me, it's still going strong! I brought it along with me to college, where it's come in very useful. I'll stash it in my backpack and work on sketchbook homework during my spare time-- or while eating a splurge of a breakfast ten minutes before a lecture class!

I highly recommend that anyone making a travel watercolor box invest in a waterbrush. These are paintbrushes that you can load with water, and they cost less than $7 at most stores.

When I was little, I always laughed when people told me to never complain about being bored. "Enjoy being a kid," they said. "Someday you'll want to be bored," they said.

"Clean your room if you're bored," Mom said.

Summer vacations with no neighbors your age and a tiny local library are a recipe for boredom. Never in my wildest dreams could nine-year-old-me imagine someone actually longing for hours with nothing to do and days that pass by in a dull monotony that is broken only by thrilling rides on the tree-swing and good books read on the hammock.

Now I really miss those days. For several months, I lived on caffinated tea and mechanical pencils. Now I have a glorious "nothing" going on all summer-- but I'm just as busy as before. Creativity is a heavy burden sometimes!

Two weeks ago, my family rented a cabin the the mountains of Colorado and had a GREAT vacation. I'll write about that later and share some of the senic photos (which I, of course, have not yet edited.) By the way, this is the reason for my long blog absence! Thanks to all the lovely people who guest posted! I hope you enjoyed their posts!



Then there was math. It's very tempting to share the long version, but the long version will easily morph out of reality and turn into a nightmarish dragon that snorts great gobs of rants between spurts of fire. I think you'd prefer the short version. It's a much friendlier specimen, with scales the color of a summer sun seen from indoors, and it only spurts rants a little bit.

I come from a family of engineers and scientists. My parents met in engineering school and well over 90% of relatives on both sides do something related to the left side of the brain. I'm the mutant who thinks with both sides of the brain-- I can do math, and I relish big science concepts, but the idea of doing that sort of thing for the rest of my life makes me want to shudder. Well, not the big science concepts. Those are cool. So are things like number theory and conic sections and trignometry and probability (at least sometimes!). The awful things are algebra, algebra, and more algebra. Alebgra does not like right-brained mutants.

This summer we had this brilliant plan of having me take a summer math class at a "nearby" community college (hour long round trip) so that I would have one less subject senior year. But the class that I tested into was crazy-- 6 credit hours in 8 weeks. That's nearly a full load, and I'd have to spend three hours each day of my summer sitting in a classroom listening to lectures on precalculus mathematics that I'd already done (the first part of the class was going to be review) and then just as much time each evening on homework. It doesn't help that if algebra is involved, my pace is quite slow. It's so gosh darn hard to keep the big picture in mind when you're caught up in number acrobatics.

After the first week, I knew that I would have to stop everything-- big art projects, summer get-togethers, regular posting on my blog, even taekwando-- in order to fit in this class, the rest of my Junior year, and Ink and Fairydust. My parents were surprisingly (to me, at least) supportive and even encouraging of my decision to drop the class. I did feel like a complete failure for a few days, though. Math has always been a sore subject for me, and I've always felt a little guilty that I don't enjoy it. I can do it, I can pull A's, but it's not something to look forward to.

It's definitely a struggle for me to have to choose what to spend my time on. God has blessed me with many talents and perhaps too much brain for my own good. There is so much that I want to do. So much that I could do, if only I had the time and energy to learn it all. What you see on my blog is only a minuscule portion of my interests.

This summer I am going to really focus on my art. I'll try to make two or three large pieces that would be worthy of a portfolio. (I have to apply to colleges in the fall!) I also want to hang out with friends, learn some new unicycle tricks, get in shape, have a good time with my family... That and finish Junior year and do the math book Dad gave me so that I can get speedier at algebra. Because apparently that's a really big deal, even for someone wanting to go into graphic design.

This is likely the last real summer vacation of my life and I can't believe how many projects I have planned for it! I also can't believe that it's half gone before I've begun. I had had an idea for teaching an art class for local kids, and I really, really hope it's not too late to get the ball rolling. Heehee, I need gas money, and I really do love teaching. And art. And NO, I have no plans of being a school art teacher, I want to do graphic design or animation.

In case you can't tell, I'm overwhelmed and a little unsure about things and I just put you through a rant. Here's something that's not about school or how busy I am. An oil painting!

I've done some Lord of the Rings artwork lately. Here's a "triptych" (actually, just three paintings in a series, I just want to use "triptych" because "triptych" is a cool word and I like cool words. Triptych is cool. *adjusts bow tie*), a triptych of Tolkien's brilliant "Roads go ever on and on" poem.

Each drawing is based off of different verses or versions found in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I'll send you off to my DeviantArt pages for more info ( "The Road from Bag End", "The Road Back Home",  and "The Road to Mordor").

"The Road goes ever on and on

Out from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

Let others follow it who can!

Let them a journey new begin,

But I at last with weary feet

Will turn towards the lighted inn,

My evening-rest and sleep to meet."