Win tickets to the Lord of the Rings event in New York City, and other awesome goodies at the Suvudu website!

In addition to your concert tickets, you’ll receive the following:

• boxed set of Howard Shore’s score for Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
• boxed set of Howard Shore’s score for Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
• boxed set of Howard Shore’s score for Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
• The new BeeCake CD, Soul Swimming. (BeeCake, if you didn’t know, is fronted by none other than Billy Boyd)

As many of you know, I will be giving a short lecture on Tolkien art on Sunday. I have received permission from a number of well-known Tolkien artists to use and discuss their work in the show. Some of these pieces are unpublished works. Cross your fingers, and pray the Power Point works. I’m prepared if it doesn’t, but lectures on art work best with, you know, pictures.

I’ll be showing work by Walt Simonson, Kinuko Craft, Donato Giancola, Ian Miller, Ted Nasmith, and more.

Another something dug up from the files. I drew this in high school. This was one of my first self published efforts, a limited edition print of 50.
This is not a bad drawing for a teen, I guess.

All my early works are heavily rendered, but I was strongly discouraged from doing this by almost everyone in comics. The plate printing techniques for most comics prior to the early 1990′s could not get a clean shot of small lines. Hatching turned muddy when reproduced. For a long time, I worked in a clean line technique instead. Not entirely a bad thing, because when you render a lot, you can cover up drawing problems. There are many artists who substitute rendering for real drawing. Working in a clean line strips away artifice and forces you to see what you are doing. It builds a house with a strong foundation. Once solid drawing foundations are set, only then should you add rendering.

Science fiction and fantasy enthusiasts are great lovers of fiddly drawing. In the 1980′s, I had more success with my original art at SF shows than I did at comic shows. However, the environment was even less welcoming to young women creators.

The work I am doing on Gone to Amerikay is fairly heavily rendered and it is quite nice to explore these hatching techniques again.