"On the Cliff"

[wallace_trust]

The scene in the Emyn Muil as our hobbit companions try to climb down the cliff.  These passages are some of my favorites because they highlight some fundamental differences in their personalities-- Frodo is being levelheaded and intelligent, while poor Sam is panicky and just wants down!   :)
 

I am satisfied with most everything in this painting except the rope.  Its color, its texture, even its pose, is not accurate at all.  It started life as a very snaky, hard-to-handle model that would not stay where I put it, but I kept it anyway for its detail.  If I had it to do over again, I would just paint it in using a path tracing tool.  

This is the first time I tried to do rain  :)  

 

Comments

[shirebound]

Thank you for bringing so many scenes to life for me. Such a difficult and frightening experience for our beloved hobbits!

[wallace_trust]

And thank you for the compliments ^_^

I hope to do many more paintings in this series. My ultimate goal is to illustrate every scene with Frodo and Sam which has meaning to me. That's a great many scenes! ^_^

[addie71]

You did a beautiful job with this terrifying part of their journey.

[suzy]

Well done! I am not seeing the problem with the rope. The rain looks great.

[wallace_trust]

Thank you so much, Addie ^_^ I would like to think, or at least hope, that I am gradually improving, bit by bit. :)

At the moment, I am mainly trying to illustrate specific scenes that I don't remember seeing anywhere else.

[wallace_trust]

Thank you, Suzy! ^_^ I like the rain, too :)

I had Such a battle with that rope. My mistake was to try to render it from a model, rather than just painting it in by hand. The model rope had at least 60 segments which had to be painstakingly posed, and then, when I tried to shift it a little, the whole thing lost its center point and I had to chase it around the scene. Besides the modeling issue, it is supposed to be a slender, magical Elf rope, grey in color, that shimmers in the dark; but to me it looks more like just a plain old Hobbit rope. ^^;

[peripety]

I like the technique you used for the rain, and especially love the sky behind them because it seems to really add to the drama of the scene. Lovely work!

[wallace_trust]

Thank you very much! It is appreciated! :)

The rain was done using what is called a 'billboard,' which is a transparency placed between the main models and the camera. The sky lighting was something I knew from the outset had to be there in some fashion, because the rest of the scene was going to be pretty dark.

Still, most of my artwork usually consists of just blundering along until I get it halfway right ^_^