Merry Christmas to my wonderful friends:
@Fingon_Findekáno ,
@Glorfindel Goldtress ,
@Server Room Gremlin and
@Tyelkormo the Fair !
I don't really remember how the concept of Snow-Finno occurred to me, but it was just one of those things that appeared vividly in my mind. Basically, for some reason there's a Snow-Elf challenge going on around
Valinor, where you have to build somebody into a snowman. If Valinor had TikTok, this would have started on Valinorian TikTok. Naturally, Finno volunteered to be the test subject, Curvo wanted to help engineer the Snow-Elf to be Structurally Optimal™️, and
Glorfindel decided to help out because he's buds with
Fingon and thought it sounded fun. Tyelko and Íri weren't that interested in helping with the challenge itself, and preferred instead to start a Snowball War.
Maitimo didn't know about any of this until it was too late, and naturally he's horrified at the idea of his bestie being built into a FREEZING COLD SNOWMAN and then attacked with snowballs!!! So he hurries outside as fast as he can. He didn't put on a coat or anything though, thus invoking Aranya’s wrath as she chases him with his cloak.
This was a really difficult drawing because the composition was so tricky due to the involvement of 7 characters. It was also extremely time consuming, taking over 14 hours in total, and even then I didn't do all the lighting and shading I wanted, and I'm dissatisfied with how some of the character's faces came out. But I'm happy with how the composition turned out, and I'm pleased I got as much shading done as I did. As of Sunday, I was worrying I'd only have lineart to give you, or maybe lineart and a very basic base color. But I managed to use my downtime between the Christmas services while I was volunteering at church on Monday and Tuesday, and that's how I got so much of it done. I also had to force myself to accept some imperfections and move on, otherwise I would have spent
ages fussing with the lineart and likely never gotten the rest done.
Another thing that added to the difficulty was the somewhat low resolution of my canvas. I didn't want the image to be enormous, and yet 7 characters had to fit on it, so it was basically the equivalent of drawing in my notebook margins. Tiny space, little room for error, and not super sharp line quality. Also, the TTF version is a bit lower resolution, and I'll send you the higher resolution version over Discord.
For funsies, here's an early initial sketch with some beginnings of lineart:
The Lego minifigure-like expressions were just a placeholder, but they cracked me up! Mostly Tyelko's, Íri's, and Curvo's.
Also, even in this early stage, you can see how my brain finds it very important to make sure Maitimo’s not skipping leg day. Or arm day. Or ab day. 👀
Now, here are some details for you guys about how I drew your characters.
@Tyelkormo the Fair : Íri practically drew herself! It was extremely easy for me to move her from the rough sketch phase to the lineart phase, and her face only took me one attempt for some reason. That was unexpected, yet a happy, especially since I hadn't really drawn her before this. As for Tyelko, I have a pretty solid routine for drawing his features at this point, but I think I'm too used to drawing grown up Tyelko because he initially looked like the manliest
elf you've ever seen in your life. Chiseled cheekbones, solid square jaw, the works. It looked like Tyelko as I imagine him, but much older than everyone else. Thankfully, with a few tweaks such as making the cheekbones rounder, shortening the midface and so on, I managed to make him look more like a teenager without totally ruining the things I liked about his face.
@Fingon_Findekáno : Finno was easy enough for me too, but with the opposite problem-- I kept struggling with him looking too young, and even now I think he looks a little too young still. But what's more important is that the Overly Cheerful Finno Energy is there, and I guess I didn't tinker with his face too much because I didn't want to ruin that. Also, to do a believable snowman shape, I first sketched in his body and then just added snow around it. I also discovered his color season seems to be Bright Winter. He seems to look most like himself in these super bright, saturated colors-- colors which I normally avoid on the color wheel because they're so bright, but I think they suit both his coloring and his personality. I also had lots of fun doing his braids!
@Glorfindel Goldtress : Just. GLORFINDEL'S HAIR. That's it, that's the speech! But seriously, this is another part of the drawing that basically drew itself. The very first gold color I picked to be the base was basically perfect. And
the golden brown I used on multiply mode for shadows, combined with a pale yellow on add mode, made the hair basically glow! The nature of the Add layer adds a sort of glow to highlights, and wow. Liquid gold right there. I could go on for ages about that hair but I will force myself to shut up about it! It definitely makes me want to draw Glorfindel again sometime, in much more detail. (He was almost the subject of my Huge Elf Drawing of 2022/2023, so that works out!) I'm very glad I know about color analysis even if only for the sake of art, because the Warm Spring colors I picked were very harmonious with him. Also, his face came fairly easy to me. I realized in my imagination, his facial features and body type are both very similar to Maitimo. Which led me to think it would be hilarious if for some reason they swapped
places, needing only a wig or hair dye to impersonate each other! And finally, please observe how his hair is flowing for no reason (there's no wind, and he'snot running). 😏
@Server Room Gremlin : Curvo would much rather be drawn in his forge than here, apparently! Would you tell him to be a little less portrait shy? He and Maitimo were the ones whose faces I massively struggled with. I fussed a lot with the angle of his mouth, because having it slanted at a sharp angle conveyed the comedic expressive "hmmm" effect I wanted, but doing it too much looked wonky relative to the semi-realistic style of the rest of his face. I also think he came across looking like "you can take the smith out of the forge but you can't take the forge out of the smith." That dark, grungy color palette I used in
Curufin the Compliant carries through here. And his expression is dead on to what I imagined, even if the facial features didn't come out as perfectly as I'd hoped. He's also maybe not as bundled up as the others, but at the same time, he's practical with his cloak, gloves and boots. Tyelko, though, he's bundling up but also not, wearing gloves and a fur-lined tunic, but at the same time he's got a plunging neckline! I guess Curvo isn't following his fashion advice today!
Hope you all enjoy this! Please leave a comment even if you can only leave a short one, because it was a huge effort for me to get this to you in light of my nonstop hectic schedule. Merry Christmas, and I'm so grateful to have you all as friends!