Dragon Sickness Thorin Drawing

It took me a little while, but I finally finished another drawing!

This one ended up being a lot more complex than I originally planned. I knew I wanted to do a little more than just a quick finished study-like drawing, but then I started contemplating “how should I finish this section? And how will that affect the next one?”

So, while it took longer than I wanted to finish it, that turned out to be a good thing. It gave me a chance to decide all those things that I think put it over the top for me.

There are still plenty of mistakes and “shouldn’t have done it that way” errors, but for me personally, if I can overlook those mistakes and be happy with a drawing… that’s what matters most. And I like it quite a bit. Which for me, is saying a lot since I’m always very hard on myself (I’ve already been looking back at many of my past drawings and wishing I’d done things differently or had been a little stronger). Ah well… this will always happen, no matter how much I practice. Always has, always will!

But this one will be added to my personal favorites, and I’m hoping to frame and hang it soon.

From the dA drawing page:

I LOVED Richard’s portrayal of the dragon sickness, and I wanted to capture that look while he wandered around Erebor looking for the Arkenstone (and believing one of his own Company must have stolen it and kept it from him). I wanted to make the viewer feel like one of the Company, wandering around discouraged, coming around a corner, and then looking up to see Thorin glaring at them as he lurks around the treasure like a mad ghost. Quickly now! Back to work! You probably don’t want him getting too close and asking if you’ve found it yet…

I decided to take my time with this and try a lot of different things — in some ways, I think my inked drawings are becoming more like paintings, as well as using things other than ink. Since I work in B&W, I want to find ways to still have parts of the image stand out over others so they don’t turn into a muddy blur. It can be difficult for me to work on backgrounds especially, but the streaky effect ended up working in my favor for damaged Erebor.

Drawn on 8.5×11 drawing paper as a blue pencil sketch, then regular pencil to darken lines. Enlarged and transferred to 11×14 Bristol using a lightbox and blue pencil.  Inked using Black Magic ink, Winsor & Newton series 7 brushes (#1, #2, and #3), as well as Micron pens (#’s 005, 01, 03, 08) and a Faber-Castell pen (M). Finished using Black Magic ink as ink wash, as well as black pencil, and Dr. Ph. Martin’s Bombay white India ink. Scanned, then only slightly adjusted contrast — for once, I didn’t mind the effect of the scanner slightly washing out the spot blacks.

Original sketch (lines turned to grayscale and darkened to show on scan) here: cfgriffith.deviantart.com/art/…
The sketch, ready for transfer to Bristol by lightbox and blue pencil: cfgriffith.tumblr.com/post/126…

Special thank you to my friend DarqueJackal , whose wonderful comments over the past couple years on various drawings inspired me to take my time and do a lot more with this drawing than I might have normally done.

Finished drawing here.

Since it did take me so long to finish, I ended up with a lot of in-progress scans throughout the process (I do this to help me spot anything I forget or help me decide how to finish something). My sweet husband offered to take all the images and put them together into an animated gif. It’s not a step-by-step or tutorial, and I will move around the drawing working on different spots to either give my eyes a break from tiny details or letting sections dry before adding more. We just thought it was neat to see the progression.

You can see the animated progress image here on this page.