The Shire

This is my first original pastel in over a year and a half. It was completed sometime in the middle of July 06; it just took my dad quite a while to scan it in. The picture itself is pretty big at 12'' by 18'' in, and it is my biggest drawing yet. I'd love to do more bigger pictures in the future.

The drawing itself is of a small countryside view of the Shire from Lord of the Rings. This is not a larger town, like Hobbiton, but just a small place in the middle of nowhere with only a few hobbits living together. Beyond the horizon is more of the Shire, and the road itself most likely leads to Hobbiton.

The picture is inspired by a photo I took while hiking, which you can find here: [link] At first when I was inspired to draw the Shire based off of this photograph, I was going to not have any hobbit holes and the path would be very, very small. However, I started drawing it, and it took on a new direction.

I was also going at first for a realistic look, but it took on a more dreamy vision, which really fits the Shire, I think. It's a sweet, nice little homeland.

The hobbit holes are based off of the movie hobbit holes, as well as some various artist's interpretations. Tolkien gave us quite a bit of description on hobbit holes, so for the most part hobbit holes looked pretty similar in each interpretation. So it was pretty easy to do them.

I was actually going to draw Gandalf's wagon with a bunch of fireworks, but I gave up on it. The road had so many layers on it and I forgot about it at the beginning, so it wasn't worth it.

For the most part, I'm content. I mean, it's a first time original pastel, so I wasn't expecting something completely breathtaking. There are things here and there that bug me, and unfortunately on the original there are some spots on it that shouldn't be there. All of those spots were edited out with PSP8. Also, since it's so large, it had to be scanned in at three different positions just to get the whole picture. I had to combine them all and get rid of two lines. All of the editing took a couple of hours because I really have no experience in it.

However, I think it turned out well in the end

Comments appreciated!