Ted Nasmith's new work

[Lúthien]

I'm sure you all now Ted Nasmith's Tolkien artwork! I'm often struck by how wonderful his scenery is, though he seems to have a bit more difficulty with especially female faces: for instance, I was not all too enthusiastic about how he painted Lúthien Tinúviel, as in these sketches:





But there are a lot of paintings that I have never seen before on his website. And this one struck me because of its pure joyousness:



Also I think he got her much better than before.

PS - Ted is a lovely guy! He is super friendly and completely unpretentious. He's a good friend of Alex Lewis and Ruth Lacon, and thus I met him on the Return of the RIng event back in 2012 (and once or twice after that).

[Meneldur Olvarion]

I really like that landscape. As I remember his work (I have not perused it for many years), he always did landscapes and more distant depictions better than people's faces. Not that such a thing bothered me, as I prefer looking at landscapes myself.

[Lúthien]

Those first two paintings of Tinúviel remind me of how female faces are drawin in Michel Vaillant, a French comic strip. The comic seems to consist entirely of race cars revving or speeding past, with frame-filling VROAAA's, VROP's and VROOOM's.
For some reason, the artist who creates that strip seems to have some trouble rendering a feminine face, maybe because the male characters are usually quite stereotypical, with a macho bravura. The characters always seemed a bit frozen and angular. He seems to have no problems at all drawing everything else, but the women's faces seem to be copies of men's faces with longer hair added.


Of course Ted Nasmith is way different. It's just that the women - especially Tunúviel in the first two drawings - also has a strangely angular face that I find not very fitting for her. Here's an example of a page from a Michel Vaillant album:



and here's a fine specimen of a page where the author goes berserk with ROAAA VROP VROAAA ROAAAAAR etcetera :whut:



And here's a page someone made by way of a parody - as you can see, they got both features spot on

[Meneldur Olvarion]

LOL!!

Hadn't seen that comic before -- it's a trip!

[Lúthien]

Vroa!

[Lúthien]

My favourite comic artist is André Franquin, creator of anti-hero Gaston Lagaffe. Besides that the comic itself is very funny, Mr. Franquin's drawings are superb: "[his] graphic approach progressively evolved towards a multi-color aesthetics, chiaroscuro and a vigorous sense of movement". Tintin creator Hergé once said of him: "Compared to him, I’m but a poor draftsman".

It's interesting that despite the large individual differences, there is quite a notable difference between the drawing styles of American and European comics. The American style seems to be more serious, realistic, movie- and action-oriented while especially the great Franco-Belgian comics (Asterix, Tintin, Gaston, ...) are more fanciful, theatrical and comical.

[Eruannlass]

Ted Naismith is one of my favorite illustrator's of Tolkien's characters and scenes, definitely.

I agree that he probably hasn't had too much experience drawing detailed images of women, because Tinuviel does have a rather chiseled face. I really can't recall much of how my favorite graphic novelists or comic book illustrators draw women compared to men, but your mention, Luthien, of TinTin reminded me that I like Joann Sfar's 'The Rabbi's Cat,' and a few months back I discovered and animated version on Netflix. Sfar actually included TinTin and Snowy in a cameo appearance in the book, and it made it's way into the film version, too. You see both briefly in this preview ~ TinTin's in a pith helmet, and firing a gun in a still shot, and Snowy's talking to the cat.

https://youtu.be/Nw0appwIp3M

But the main thing that pertains to this topic (drawing styles of the sexes) is that in the credits for the film, the background featured Sfar's character sketches of the Rabbi's daughter, Zlabya. Since the story's set in 1930s Algeria, she dresses in a style I describe as 'gypsy,' in brighter colors, with more revealing clothing because of the heat, so the sketches of her were either in said clothing, or partially or mostly nude, and included several face studies. As both a former art student and art model, I admired his inclusion of these figure drawings, because I think that a lot of animators/illustrators feel they can skip that step, citing the existence of computers as the reason. :hmm:

Naismith is very accomplished, but faces are something that require a lot of specific practice, as I integrated into my mind over about 12 years of hearing the life drawing instructors as they taught around me. Maybe these drawings of Luthien are his first foray into portraiture. I too feel that the last one is the most striking, and while his talents mainly lie with 'people in scenic settings,' it's nice to see him do work that pushes him out of his comfort zone.

Eruannlass

[Lúthien]

Truth be told, those first two images of Tinúviel are labelled as sketches / studies on his website.

Thanks for the references! I'll have a look ASAP.