Greetings! 2

I finished the design for the first card last week, this left me at a fork in the road…do I move on to design more, or do I finish painting each one before moving to the next? I chose the latter option however, painting is a slow process, so I’m not finished just yet. Hopefully I’ll have it ready next week.

At the end of last weeks post I was left with space at the top of the page to fill. I decided to work in another ‘box’ and have the Tengwar read ‘Thank You’ again only using a different script this time. In the end, I think this looks well, possibly even better than the ‘AN’ would have, so I’m happy out.

Painting is extremely slow on these, it would give one plenty of time for reflection if one was the type, but for me I prefer to listen to music (Black Pistol Fire, The Raconteurs, and The White Stripes this week. Yep, all bluesy rock), audiobooks (Tress by Brandon Sanderson), and Podcasts (After six years the hosts finally got to the end of the book).  I can’t really do any of this at the designing stage as it takes up too much brain power.

I tried to take pictures at the end of each stage for you. When I say stage, I mean colour. I always do the rubrication (tiny red dots) first as the construction lines help me to stay straight-ish.

I then erased all the pencil construction lines. I had the red ink out, so I went ahead and painted the triangular parts of the key pattern, background and breaks of the spirals, background of the large tengwar and the new tengwar.

Next up was the knotwork inside the large Tengwar. This is a new yellow and I think it’s a little too intense. I’m hoping that the black ink will offset it a little bit when I outline everything at the end.

The intensity of the yellow doesn’t really come through, probably due to a combination of the light and my camera.

And finally, a lovely blue for the large Tengwar themselves.

I had a little mishap with the blue that’ll have to be cleaned up. I’ll wait until the ink drys completely before trying to fix it.

I need to mix at least two new colours this week. I’m thinking about a dark blue for the border (top-right/bottom left) and a kind of yellowy-orangey-brown for the part that surrounds the large Tengwar and border. The blue to keep a consistency with the Tengwar and the yellowy-orangey-brown to compliment the blues and as it surrounds everything on the page it should hold it all together.

I’ll then need to have a look at the knotwork in the border, the small squares that I’ve left in the key-patterns, the dogs head, and the step-patterns behind the ‘AN’. Once I have that done, I’ll be able to outline everything with black ink and finish the centre of the spirals all over the page (I’ve found that there’s no point in penning these first - as the paint will just cover the ink – its best to just paint and then freehand the final stages of spirals).

Thank you again for your support.

Mick.