A book that influenced m life - the #evernighties

A book that influence my life

It maybe unoriginal, but the book that influenced my life most is The Lord of the Rings.

I can’t even begin to tell how deeply ingrained Middle-Earth is in my life.

It’s not just that I love to draw pale blond elves with luminous eyes, and that I love swirly floral designs, and that I often say things like “Fool of a Took!”, or “What about second breakfast?”.

No, in fact I think that some of the most life-changing decisions I ever took had a distinctly Baggins-like cast to them.

At a crisis time of my life, I decided that much the best thing to do was to drop everything, including any pretence to respectability, and go on a grand walking adventure. In our case it was not so much a case of there and back again. We never meant to go back. We meant to tramp around Europe until we found a place where we could build a “hut in the woods”. Our own Shire, in other words.

We did find it. And there we decided to build a house with grass roof…

Much as I admire the tall Elves of Tolkien’s legends, I am very obviously a hobbit. Not only I am hobbit-sized, but I am also a gardener, and a tolerably rustic creature. I love good simple food, preferably grown in my own garden, or foraged in the nearby countryside. I don't have much use for kings and queens and complicated machinery (all of which can be described as orkeries, in my opinion). I love mushrooms, stout ponies, and "good tilled earth". I don't like upstairs, and I prefer to avoid being seen by the Tall People on my country walks.

 

But, like Bilbo, I have a reverence and need for higher tales and poetry in my life. So much of my art has to do with Middle-Earth, I would not even know where to start... embroideries, and paintings, and drawings, and maps, even woodwork and strange one-off projects... I have mixed Tolkien's world into my crafting since I was a child.

Gildor Inglorion - Pencil drawing

© Katherine Wvern 2018

Many find Tolkien’s stories antiquated, not so much for the (intentionally) high and archaic tone of them, but because of their “simple”, black and white moral tone, preferring a more cynical, more modern take on politics (a la George Martin, say).

I disagree on this assessment of Tolkien’s moral as simplistic. And in fact I always felt that his acknowledgment of some villains’ struggles (think of Gollum, Denethor, Boromir, and to a certain extent even Saruman or Wormtongue) and some heroes’ shortcomings (Frodo would never have destroyed the Ring, and even Treebeard was swayed by Saruman’s words, and let him loose, giving him a chance devastate the Shire, and not all hobbits shone for courage and loyalty, and Fëanor, the most gifted of all elves, made such a cock of things that we are still collecting the pieces to this day!) left a very strong impression on me as a child, and was perhaps the greatest ethical lesson I ever absorbed. It taught me to always try to see the other side of things (something that is sadly out of fashion lately) while still acknowledging that there are some absolutes of good and evil that it would be good to treat less cynically. 

Fëanor - Pencil drawing

© Katherine Wvern 2018

And Tolkien was, profoundly, an ecologist, perhaps before the word was even invented. That too he imprinted early on on me. 

While many accuse the Fantasy genre of “escapism” (an accusation that Tolkien himself refuted beautifully) there are lessons to be taken from good fantasy, especially at a time when our “real world” is becoming increasingly and dangerously unlivable.

 Lothlorien Brooch - stumpwork embroidery 2012

Fëanor - a pencil sketch

Been doodling a bit with my pencils.

I love this dark, dark, rebellious, scowling, gloomy Fëanor, brooding and selfcontained within his own storm.

"Fëanor - Spirit of Fire"

Graphite Pencil,

35x50 cm 

© Katherine Wyvern 2018

"For Fëanor was made the mightiest in all parts of body and mind: in valour, in endurance, in beauty, in understanding, in skill, in strength and subtlety alike: of all the Children of Ilúvatar, and a bright flame was in him."

― The Silmarillion, Of the Sun and Moon and the Hiding of Valinor

I always thought that if there was ever an elf who could sport a mohawk, that would be Fëanor, for sure, the Noldor's very own enfant terrible. Plagued with insufferable pride and a rebellious spirit, but the most talented and creative of all the elves ever spawned, I feel a more than a little fondness for him.

There are many illustrations of Fëanor, but they all seemed pretty bland to me. When I saw this dark, brooding selfportrait of Danila Kovalev, I knew it was the Fëanor I was looking for.

 Faber Castell - Graphite Pure HB to 9B

 I had this idea that between the his "Spirit of Fire", and the fact that the first elves were born in a dark world before the Sun and the Moon were created, Fëanor could perhaps have shiny eyes, like a cat.

It was my husband who mentioned the likeness with Riddick. Well, "You are not afraid of the dark, are you?"


I can claim very little credit for this picture. All the beauty, intensity and elegance were already in the original photo of (and by) this amazingly gorgeous, talented and kind model.

Gildor, a pencil drawing

 

It’s been raining non-stop ALL day, a rather depressing business, but at least by working my eyes blind in the watery gloom, I managed to finish my new Tolkien illustration, starring the stunningly beautiful Paul Boche as Gildor Inglorion.

Gildor plays only a small part in the book and none at all in the movie (bah!), but he is the first elf that you encounter in the ‘real’ story, and not even meeting La Grande Dame Galadriel in the heart of the Golden Wood packs anywhere near as much magic as Gildor appearing out of the blue dusk in the homely woods of the Shire (chasing off a snuffling Black Rider in the process, I might add, so there!).

 

When Gildor and his companions take the hobbits on their nightly walk into the forest and a late banquet, “Sam walked along at Frodo’s side, as if in a dream, with an expression on his face half of fear and half of astonished joy… Pippin afterwards recalled little of either food or drink, for his mind was filled with the light upon the elf-faces, and the sound of voices so various and so beautiful that he felt in a waking dream…”

I always loved this, and hope I have captured some of the magic… The background is very freely copied from an ivy-overgrown tree in the forest just outside my garden. The moths are Smerinthus ocellatus, the eyed hawk-moth, a good totem I think for a far-wandering nocturnal elf.

 

 

“Elen sila lumen omentielvo” is the High Elven line that Frodo speaks to Gildor, “A star shines on the hour of our meeting.” 

With many thanks to Paul Boche for allowing me to use his picture(s) (three different photos went into this... he has a a challenging face!). 

 

Faber Castell Graphite Pure, from B to 9B

(it was COLD at my table these last couple of days)

In other news, I'll be posting book related stuff tomorrow :)