And the Shadow Passed

It all started with a conversation between two Lord of the Rings nerds who had just completed a watch party of the extended version of The Return of the King. Yes, one of those nerds was me. We were discussing the fact that the movie left out much of a beautiful scene from the books, and none of the fan art we'd seen was accurate, since the movies got Faramir's appearance wrong.

I decided I'd make my own version, and keep it accurate. I started with a sketch, and went on to a painting. This post will travel through the journey of my painting. Parts two and three should follow, part two being a journey through the sketch (which is actually not quite finished), and part three a similar painting that features the quote rather than the characters.

Before I go any further, here is the quote that inspired it all:

"And so they [Éowyn and Faramir] stood on the walls of the City of Gondor, and a great wind rose and blew, and their hair, raven and golden, streamed out mingling in the air. And the Shadow departed, and the Sun was unveiled, and light leaped forth; and the waters of Anduin shone like silver, and in all the houses of the City men sang for the joy that welled up in their hearts from what source they could not tell."

- The Return of the King, by J.R.R. Tolkien.

So now, let's look at how the painting took shape. I started by sketching a few guidelines based off the original sketch. Hopefully you can see that in this picture:

Next, after pulling up some reference pictures, I started on the mountains and sky.

The tyndall effect was probably the hardest part of the painting. I had never sketched one before this drawing, let alone painted one. But I'm quite happy with how it turned out! It was also the most meaningful; I had picked it to be the background specifically, as the light shining down, blocking the mountains of Mordor (especially Orodruin) was meant to be symbolic of the fact that light was breaking through and the darkness would not overcome.

Here is a picture that compares how far I've come with the original (but not yet finished) sketch. (Also, as you may notice the second canvas in many of these photos, that will end up being the second painting featured in part three).

Next, the grass. Mixing the right shade of paint for grass has pretty much never worked successfully for me. However, this time I was able to take a lesson from the famous painter, Claude Monet, and instead of going with the typical "grass is green" I was able to focus more on what color was really there and make a pretty accurate guess on what colors I should mix. I was also very happy with how that turned out! I also painted the river (Anduin), which also impressed me.

Now to start the balcony and stone pillars. I started with a base layer of pure white.

Coming back to finish the stonework, a few reference pictures helped me as I figured out just exactly what colors the stone should be. Guess I didn't need the white layer after all!

I was feeling really accomplished by this point. So much of this painting was new for me. I've painted before, but never pretty much anything in this scene. But now I came to the hardest part: adding in Éowyn and Faramir. I was so scared I would botch it after all that work.

To make sure I got them right, I ended up tracing the sketch onto regular paper and cutting out the shapes so that I could trace the outlines right onto the painting, beginning with Eowyn's cloak. At this point I also filled the plant boxes with heather, which is one of my favorite plants ever.

The cloak ended up needing multiple layers of paint to hide the balcony behind it. I also settled on colors for Faramir's outfit and began painting him in.

Next to add would be their hair and Faramir's hand, the biggest challenge of which would be mixing the paint for Éowyn's hair and Faramir's skin tone.

At this point, all was complete except for two things: shading, and the stars on Éowyn's mantle. Add my signature in the corner and, at last, it was finished!

This painting presented a lot of challenges to me, and took over three weeks to complete, but I was very happy with how it turned out, and it was a lot of fun to work on.

Now to finish the rest of the project!