The Trolls (Below, left and right) is probably my favourite of the pieces, because of it's unique mark making and the dark, high contrast palette used. I think it is akin to my work in that I use alot of different lines in a stylistic way, but with dots. I would like to try this technique with my etching on the black acrylic, to somehow mimic the darkness captured. It almost reminds me of a negative photograph.
It was something someone said in my group crit that really got me looking at these: 'its almost Tolkien level architecture'. I began to think about what exactly that meant- I think it was while the pieces in Tolkien's books work because they are part of a story, my pieces are the story. I believe the impact of being able to create your own story for these worlds is just as powerful as having a novel with images attatched. What Tolkien has managed though, is to create drawings which completely match the feel of the books and encompass everything they contain; the mismatch of architecture, the mismatch of cultures and people; and the vast, complex histories that spread throughout the land within Middle Earth (in this way it can be compared to Skyrim).
I think it also means my most immersive drawings, much like Tolkien's, do not simply contain a building. The most successful of his pieces show the landscape, but not in an obvious way; in one where the ladscape appears to be an extension of the buildings. I think it adds to the realism of certain fantasies, that people in these books and games decide to build things in the most impractical of places, simply because they can; it's not real. I say that, even knowing this is entirely the point, floating cities and undergound countries are entirely possible in the worlds that artists like Tolkien have created.
(The Front Gate, below, left, Lake Town, below, right)
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