Full view please!

Edit: Top looks *much* better in this photograph. You will see why Gandalf is one of my favorites, and see that Aragorn is not a motionless blur.

All. Flipping. 9 of them. On one big piece of paper. Main reason for doing this is that, with the exception of Aragorn, I haven't drawn any of them for over 3 years. Definitely time for an update (and now I can move more old drawings over to my scraps )

The original paper is 18 x 24 in; each portrait measures about 4.25 inches by 6 inches. And in RL, the portraits are straight; there was slight curving in the paper because... well, who knows why. I tried to make it as straight as possible through the wonderfulness of photoshop rotation. I'd say the whole thing took between 30 and 40 hours. Graphite pencil, a dark charcoal pencil, and liberal use of a blending stump and q-tip used. The portraits come from a black/white photo set of Fellowship of the Ring characters.

Now, for individual review!

Aragorn: The original photo is, for some odd reason, sepia tone unlike the rest of them. Go figure. I like the other portrait I did of him in 07 better, but you can never have too much Aragorn.

Frodo: I HATE HIM. Wow. Talk about an unexpected challenge. I ended up redoing the whole entire face at the end of the full drawing. I'm still not completely happy with him, to be honest.

Gandalf: I thought he would be one of the hardest. He ended up being one of the easiest. Go figure. I love this rendition of him.

Pippin: By Pippin I realized I hated drawing hobbits. Frodo was still worse. Still much better than my last attempt of drawing him, though there are a few things that could be better.

Sam: For some reason, unlike all the others, he has a white background in the original photo. I made it black for symmetrical purposes. He was probably the easiest hobbit, though I had a tough time with his chin... to be quite honest, I had a hard time with all of the hobbits' chins.

Merry: I'm still not really satisfied with him, either, though I think it's more my dissatisfaction with the original photo than my rendition. It's not his best shot. Love the design I managed to get on his clothing though.

Boromir: One of my favorite photos of him, for sure. I did discover that I cannot draw chainmail for the life of me. I also made it an upper body shot rather than the whole figure like the original. Other than the chainmail I really like it.

Gimli: Also cropped from the original photo to exclude as much mail as possible. I'm really surprised how well it turned out.

Legolas: I'm really happy with him. He's the only one in the series to show visible weapons, which I find really strange. Also cropped, simply because making the head half an inch rather than an inch would be a serious pain to draw.


Comments/critique of course, appreciated