The Painting of a Hobbit Hole

Guess who’s reading Lord of the Rings again? Yup. This girl. And to celebrate hobbitishness and those blessed little holes under hills where life is simple and full of joy, I hopped onto Pinterest to search for hobbit hole photos. Once I found one that appealed to me (it had a pumpkin in a tiny wheelbarrow in the front yard!! How cute is that?!), I began painting. Here is my step by step process and personal thoughts for various stages of the painting process.

Here is my reference! The first thing I noticed was all the green. I guessed how many shades of green I would need and mixed them up, since if everything was the same shade it would come out rather blobbish

My art desk totally isn’t the messiest place ever, ehehe. Once I had wrestled my way through the clutter to make space, I slapped down the sky and clouds. Backgrounds usually need to come first in paintings, slowly adding the objects closest to the ”camera” in turn

Next came the basic shapes. You can’t get to the fun details without the messy blobs first. This is actually a very fun stage for me because I can be a bit wild with the paint, mapping out where I want things to go and figuring out the shapes. I was worried about the trees for a while, because they were definitely not pretty, but I hoped they would improve over time

With thinner brushes I added dirt, grass strokes in light green, and smaller things such as doors and windows. With a flat brush I dabbed leaves onto the trees. To my great relief it helped their appearance a LOT

Blending colors for depth and shading, I started fixing mistakes and smoothing out lumpy edges. The pumpkin was my favorite part to draw. Maybe because pumpkins are just the cutest things?

With a few flowers, more shading, and a shiny gold doorknob, the painting is complete! Then I scavenged some supplies to make a fun photo shoot. Shoutout to my awesome father for letting me use his wedding ring as a ring of power 😁