I LOVED Richard's portrayal of the dragon sickness, and I wanted to capture that look while he wandered around Erebor looking for the Arkenstone (and believing one of his own Company must have stolen it and kept it from him). I wanted to make the viewer feel like one of the Company, wandering around discouraged, coming around a corner, and then looking up to see Thorin glaring at them as he lurks around the treasure like a mad ghost. Quickly now! Back to work! You probably don't want him getting too close and asking if you've found it yet...

I decided to take my time with this and try a lot of different things -- in some ways, I think my inked drawings are becoming more like paintings, as well as using things other than ink. Since I work in B&W, I want to find ways to still have parts of the image stand out over others so they don't turn into a muddy blur. It can be difficult for me to work on backgrounds especially, but the streaky effect ended up working in my favor for damaged Erebor.

Drawn on 8.5x11 drawing paper as a blue pencil sketch, then regular pencil to darken lines. Enlarged and transferred to 11x14 Bristol using a lightbox and blue pencil. Inked using Black Magic ink, Winsor & Newton series 7 brushes (#1, #2, and #3), as well as Micron pens (#'s 005, 01, 03, 08) and a Faber-Castell pen (M). Finished using Black Magic ink as ink wash, as well as black pencil, and Dr. Ph. Martin's Bombay white India ink. Scanned, then only slightly adjusted contrast -- for once, I didn't mind the effect of the scanner slightly washing out the spot blacks.


Original sketch (lines turned to grayscale and darkened to show on scan) here.
The sketch, ready for transfer to Bristol by lightbox and blue pencil here.