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- Nov 28, 2022
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So, I finished this a few months ago after having worked on it for a full year. But I finally got the high-quality pictures from my mom, who photographed it with her portrait lens, so now I'm finally able to share it!
Since I spent a year working on this, you are now going to hear the backstory.
I began this drawing in November 2022, when I barely knew anything about the Silmarillion. I hadn't even started to read it yet, but I was very interested in the characters and story, and vaguely familiar with some of the major characters. I was in the mood to draw something, and Elves had been on my mind a lot, so I decided to draw an Elf. I was trying to decide between Maedhros and Glorfindel since I was pretty intrigued with both of them, but I ended up going with Maedhros because I figured he would be more recognizable with his red hair and missing hand. Maedhros was not necessarily my favorite character yet. But that quickly changed as I learned more about The Silmarillion and actually read it!
My inspiration for this drawing is the following quote from the Dagor Bragollach chapter:
Also, I mean this portrait to be more like a royal portrait and not a literal snapshot of what's going on in battle. In a real battle, he would be wearing a helmet, and likely have his hair tied back or braided. There would probably be a lot more blood and dirt and messy stuff too. Also, I envision him with more scars on his face than just one. But that headcanon came well after I had done a lot of work on this drawing, so it was too late to add more scars at that point. Let's just say it's First Age Photoshop. 😂
Another thing you should know is that his face came out of my imagination. I did not use a reference of any particular actor or model. I used a few different reference photos to assist with the angle and light source and such, but I designed the structure of his face myself based on how he appears in my mind. However, even though I've done this drawing and many smaller sketches of Maedhros, I can never convey him exactly as he appears in my mind's eye. This comes really close, though.
There are a few techniques I'd like to talk about too. Early on into the drawing's development, an artist friend of mine taught me how to use makeup brushes and charcoal dust to create extremely smooth, soft shading. This is what I did to get his skin to look so nice. The technique helped me a lot with the silky cloak, too. This artist friend also taught me not to be afraid of using absolute black generously. It helped give the drawing a lot of depth and contrast.
The other technique is the hair color! I'm super proud of the hair color. It actually doesn't have any true red in it. It's a mixture of tuscan red, poppy red, yellow ochre, violet, magenta, and sienna brown. The dark areas are actually mostly shaded with violet. It really makes the color richer. When experimenting, I found my samples looked super dull when I shaded the dark areas with brown. Here's the sample page where I was experimenting with my hair color recipe. (See the one on the bottom left and how dull it is? That's shaded with brown. the other two are shaded with purple.)
And actually, I don't think this really is Maedhros' book-accurate hair color, which was more of a reddish brown. This is much more vibrant and saturated. But like I said, this is sort of an idealized portrait and not super literal.
Why is the hair colored and not the rest of the drawing? The public answer is that it adds a cool contrast, draws emphasis to the hair, blah blah blah. The private answer is that I suck at coloring skin with colored pencil. And I also didn't want to color 2,000 square miles of metal armor. (Speaking of the armor, if you're an expert on armor, please don't critique mine. I'm not an armor expert. This is a mail shirt with plate armor pauldrons and bracers, plus a velvet tunic on top. I've been hearing lately that plate armor wouldn't have been accurate to the First Age, but look, I probably spent hundreds of hours on this, and I think it looks cool.)
The last thing I'd like to mention is THE SIZE. Which is the main reason why this took me a year.
That's 18 by 24 inches!
The reason why it's so huge is because I wanted to show that he's missing a hand, but I also wanted his face to have detail. As a result, I spent a million years of my life shading chain links and velvet fuzzies. Worth it, though!
If you read all this, I appreciate it, and look forward to hearing your thoughts!
Since I spent a year working on this, you are now going to hear the backstory.
I began this drawing in November 2022, when I barely knew anything about the Silmarillion. I hadn't even started to read it yet, but I was very interested in the characters and story, and vaguely familiar with some of the major characters. I was in the mood to draw something, and Elves had been on my mind a lot, so I decided to draw an Elf. I was trying to decide between Maedhros and Glorfindel since I was pretty intrigued with both of them, but I ended up going with Maedhros because I figured he would be more recognizable with his red hair and missing hand. Maedhros was not necessarily my favorite character yet. But that quickly changed as I learned more about The Silmarillion and actually read it!
My inspiration for this drawing is the following quote from the Dagor Bragollach chapter:
Also, I mean this portrait to be more like a royal portrait and not a literal snapshot of what's going on in battle. In a real battle, he would be wearing a helmet, and likely have his hair tied back or braided. There would probably be a lot more blood and dirt and messy stuff too. Also, I envision him with more scars on his face than just one. But that headcanon came well after I had done a lot of work on this drawing, so it was too late to add more scars at that point. Let's just say it's First Age Photoshop. 😂
Another thing you should know is that his face came out of my imagination. I did not use a reference of any particular actor or model. I used a few different reference photos to assist with the angle and light source and such, but I designed the structure of his face myself based on how he appears in my mind. However, even though I've done this drawing and many smaller sketches of Maedhros, I can never convey him exactly as he appears in my mind's eye. This comes really close, though.
There are a few techniques I'd like to talk about too. Early on into the drawing's development, an artist friend of mine taught me how to use makeup brushes and charcoal dust to create extremely smooth, soft shading. This is what I did to get his skin to look so nice. The technique helped me a lot with the silky cloak, too. This artist friend also taught me not to be afraid of using absolute black generously. It helped give the drawing a lot of depth and contrast.
The other technique is the hair color! I'm super proud of the hair color. It actually doesn't have any true red in it. It's a mixture of tuscan red, poppy red, yellow ochre, violet, magenta, and sienna brown. The dark areas are actually mostly shaded with violet. It really makes the color richer. When experimenting, I found my samples looked super dull when I shaded the dark areas with brown. Here's the sample page where I was experimenting with my hair color recipe. (See the one on the bottom left and how dull it is? That's shaded with brown. the other two are shaded with purple.)
And actually, I don't think this really is Maedhros' book-accurate hair color, which was more of a reddish brown. This is much more vibrant and saturated. But like I said, this is sort of an idealized portrait and not super literal.
Why is the hair colored and not the rest of the drawing? The public answer is that it adds a cool contrast, draws emphasis to the hair, blah blah blah. The private answer is that I suck at coloring skin with colored pencil. And I also didn't want to color 2,000 square miles of metal armor. (Speaking of the armor, if you're an expert on armor, please don't critique mine. I'm not an armor expert. This is a mail shirt with plate armor pauldrons and bracers, plus a velvet tunic on top. I've been hearing lately that plate armor wouldn't have been accurate to the First Age, but look, I probably spent hundreds of hours on this, and I think it looks cool.)
The last thing I'd like to mention is THE SIZE. Which is the main reason why this took me a year.
That's 18 by 24 inches!
The reason why it's so huge is because I wanted to show that he's missing a hand, but I also wanted his face to have detail. As a result, I spent a million years of my life shading chain links and velvet fuzzies. Worth it, though!
If you read all this, I appreciate it, and look forward to hearing your thoughts!
