[snarf]

That is fucking incredible. Excuse my French.

It reminds me of Veb's style a bit. It has a ton of impact. I love the movement and palette as well. You're improving ten-fold! Great stuff, bro.

[Marvel]

Awesome work Timo! I never really thought what Melkor would look like, but that's a good rendering. Still, I would've made him a bit more 'nice', since he fooled the other valar just by talking - one would imagine he couldn't have looked all that evil for doing that.

And lithius611, Tevildo was the prince of cats ... he was the predecessor of Sauron, even if of different shape and stature. (and why I have this in fresh memory is because I just started a couple of weeks back reading the History of Middle Earth again.

Swampbug, Melkor (Melko) = Morgoth.

And _originally_ he wasn't the god of evil, he just was interested in dark matters etc. ... and partially because the other Vala chained him for three ages, his heart became rotten etc.

[ January 19, 2002: Message edited by: Marvel ]

[burn0ut]

awesome bg!

[Cos]

hey pretty cool painting bg, simple but effective. Like the motion in the brush strokes too. Doesn't really resemble Justin Sweet's work at all tho imo.. kinda reminds me more of Frosts stuff. Think if you put some greens in the palette too might of been nice.

[ January 19, 2002: Message edited by: Cos ]

[Mr. T]

nice one, bg

in my opinio silmarillion is much better than the lord of the rings trilogy, but then again, it would be impossible to film it all

your pic reminded me of the fact i never really tried to visualize the Valar (or anything alse) on paper or something... really ought to.

cheers.

[Rhomb]

Very effective looking image. As a painting it's little too monocromatic and flat though IMO. It looks more like only a silhouette, but it could be my monitor gamma too. Using some subtle color variation (especially on the character) would help to balance the pic and bring out the forms better I think.
E.g. more of that blue you have down there lower righ corner and greens like Cos mentioned. Good work anyways.

Ville

[Quasar]

I dont know his back story or if he is ever described but that painting looks cool and he could deffinatly be a very bad guy... Sauron was armored from head to toe it seemed so I cant tell who is meaner..maybe suaron looks like bill gates under all that armor?? ....

[Anthony]

Melkor was surely "evil" from the start, if only because he wanted something different than the creator. In the music he tried to undermine the song, and that was what was realized in his part of middle earth. Typical Satan stuff going on

[Artgolem]

i was going to say that you should just finish the piece, but it's very evocative this way, which perhaps is better. it's a very strong piece, simple composition, but dynamic use of color and stroke. you've communicated his dark might, but not so much his deceitful nature, but it's stil good.

-matt

[Makafui]

all i can say it thats pretty much the daddy!

[Bg]

Tolkien created such a rich and wonderful world, and what would be more challenging task than to draw the Melkor himself. The preparation started with a couple of character designs, I did the first concepts months ago and there was dozens of sketches done before I even thought about painting the pic. December 19th the Fellowship of the Ring introduced the greatest looking villain of movie history, Dark Lord Sauron... and Melkor is supposed to be 10x meaner, so he is incredibly hard character to do.
This week I started the painting process using my new double monitor drawing studio and after two miserable tries I accomplished something I was quite happy with (the pic below), even though it resembles Justin Sweet's style (too) much imo.. sorry about that.

Enjoy the pic, of course it isn't perfect by any means and that's why I would like to hear your critiques and comments.

(No reference was used and the resolution was 4000xsomething)



[edit] wrong url [edit]

[ January 19, 2002: Message edited by: Bg ]

[ January 21, 2002: Message edited by: Bg ]

[lithius611]

awesome pic..wasnt he referred to as the prince of cats? i guess the horns get that across but i always pictured him as less human... kick ass pic anyway

[swampbug]

Was Melkor the orginal god of evil, because of all this time my LOTR buff friends been telling me his name was Morgoth. Not that you're wrong, my friend is prolly wrong...

I dont know much about LOTR universe.


Ohh and bitchen pic too.. the limited color pallete just attacks ! and its very dreamesque.

[Morgoth]

Hey, I dint know I had a spycam in my room!

Nice work Bg, btw have you seen JRRT's illustration of Melkor?
Of all Tolkien artists I like Roger Garland the most. He really rocks. Here's the site:
Roger Garland's Stuff Unfortunatelly all the images are quite small...

[Drawnblud]

SWEET CHRISTMAS!!! This is IN-FRICKIN-CREDIBLE!! I love the colours and the whole mood of the work. This is the perfect example of what you don't see can affect you more than what you do see. This guy scares the peanuts outta my shite and you can't really see him that well!!!

Awesome work!!

[Isric]

Wow Bg, impressive! That pose is perfect for an evil god. I hope you don't mind, but I tried to exagerate a few Silmarilion things. My paint over is a post-stolen-silmaril thing, when melkor has taken them and put them in his crown. Because of this I aslo tried to make his hands look a little more burned. I also put in a bunch of features that I've used when drawing our buddy morgoth, like spikes and such. And just because I liked the design, I tried to give him a movie-sauron kind of mask.
This paint over thing isn't a 'this is how to really do it' painting, I just thought it would be fun to throw a few things on. Ah, and the guy with the sword is Beren, who's come to take a silmaril from morgoth's head. Man, I'm the biggest tolkien geek in the world....

[Bg]

Thanks for the encouraging comments!

lithius611 and swampbug: listen to Marvel

Snarf and Burnout: thanks guys!

Cos: The previous version was rendered to death, so I tried to figure out how I could make the thing work without lots of shading and all the details.. I blocked in the colours, shapes and rendered only the important parts and surprise: it worked much better, the result reminds me of Justin's style because of the focused detail. I might try the greens, thanks for the suggestion.

Mr. T: Yeah, I love Silmarillion too, the strories are excellent, so epic! Shame you can't find the English version here.. I'll have to order it from Amazon. Reading/watching translated/dubbed book/movie is half the fun..

Rhomb, The character shows quite clearly on my monitor, it's almost impossible to save a pic for web so it looks good on all monitors You're right about the colours.. I'll try to put some variation there..

Quasar, you'll never know

Morgoth The Dark Lord, I didn't expect the Morgoth himself show up here, I've some nude pics of you also haha =) I made a search of "Melkor" in Google image search, but I didn't find it, but I would like to see it..
Do you know any other place where I can find Roger Garland's paintings?

Drawnblud: And hiding parts of an image is especially clever when you're bad at anatomy Thanks!

Damn YOU Isric! That is FRIGGIN' awesome! The spikes, Beren (great pose), refined horns, clouds, everything!! Thank you very, very much! and do you mind if I borrow "some" ideas? I fear I have this stupid smile on my face next twenty hours hahaa

(The pic flashed on the screen when I was about to start writing a reply for ya )

[SWANY]

I reckon spawn could take him on



[ January 20, 2002: Message edited by: SWANY ]

[Marvel]

Isric, that's a great overpaint. I also was wondering why he didn't have the silmarils in his crown, but then again the pic could've been 'taken' before Melkor laying his hands on them. I would've made Beren larger though - to me the valar aren't _that_ large, only say 5-10x that of us humans, but it's really only a matter of taste.

Morgoth The Dark Lord, to me John Howe has always been the one and only Tolkien artist - he is the one that made the looks of the world, characters and events in my head (might also be why he was selected as a visuals consult for the movies as well).

Didn't find an official page of his, but here's some stuff: http://www.gandolf.com/graphics/tolkien/howe.shtml

[lookitsfrank]

the best place for all tolkien art is rolozo tolkien they have the brothers hildebrant, howe, and all the big guys. I have to warn you though, there is alot of crappy art too, but it's still fun to wade through.
Frank

[:::nVIDIA:::]

What up G? It's 2G+2 now..can't believe the years are flying by. Anyway, that's a swell pic, just using 2 colors. OK, maybe with some hint of blue. Nice shade of reds as well and the painting strokes are somethings else. Did you use Painter? or combo of Photoshop and Painter? My only complaint and it's just nick-picking is it's pose. It doesn't seem like it's at "peak" pose, sorta in between extremes. Don't misunderstand me it's awesome pix....ya know, I gotta pick on something....siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt....heh. Ed--

[Flexible Elf]

Very cool painting BG! and very nice paintover Isric. Makes me wanna read the Silmarillion again.

-Flexible Elf

[:::nVIDIA:::]

Yo, Timmeh(o).....what up fOO? Anyway, thanks for letting me "in" on your secret Photoshop trix...I haven't posted here cuz I haven't done anything good to post. Yeah, I was going to say if you want to give shot at painting that Mech. I'm interested in seeing how you envision/paint it - color wise. Late, Ed--

[Bg]

Updated the pic.

Swany: haha!

Marvel: The Silmarils are now there, and so is Fingolfin, no Beren this time I think the huge Melkor works in still images, but in a movie it would look better smaller, after all Melkor even put his foot to Fingolfin's neck so he couldn't have been more than twice the size of him.
John Howe's (and Alan Lee's) designs are fantastic, but both of them aren't very good when it comes to atmoshpere and (realistic) shading.. yes, there's lots of details, but it doesn't look realistic.. (I'm realism freak)
Thanks for the link, I didn't have the Galadriel painting and the Nazgul.

Lookitsfrank: I've been there, great resource.

Nice to see you again, Ed. No more 2G+1 Haha It's all done in Photoshop, lots of custom brushes involved, I also found out that you can get really nice "dot" effect if you turn the brush "spacing" off and shade fast, it gives a great texture!
My anatomy is bad so I'm very aware of what kind of poses I do, I think Frazetta style extreme pose would have been too much for my current skills and I didn't have (I have now) a digital camera last week..
btw. You should post your art more, the robot in the mech thread was awesome!

[Bg]

Thanks Matt, I noticed you've updated your webpage. Looks nice so far and it's easy to navigate.

Ed: Check this out if you already haven't, there's your little mech coloured, hope you like it

Feanor: That's a quite compliment, thanks for the quote of the English version of Silmarillion.


[edit] wrong url (again) [edit]

[ January 22, 2002: Message edited by: Bg ]

[Samurai]

Amazing work BG. You managed to give visual life to a character that is the source of all darkness in Arda. I'd love to see you take on Manw�, Tulkas or Aul�... or perhaps even Gothmog

Again, very good work.

[somethingwonderful]

That is just brilliant. As a long time fan of the Silmarillion (20 years or so), I really...*really* think you captured a lot of it right there. Melkor makes Sauron look like the lackey he truly is in the stories. That picture is brilliant.

[ToasT 01]

A really nice job - esp Because for me its not done in a typical fantasy style ( soft )

[F�anor]

Definitely one of the best renderings of the battle between Fingolfin and Melkor...very very nice

Just for the uninitiated, this should explain things a bit. Taken from the silmarillion:

"Now news came to Hithlum that Dorthonion was lost and the sons of
Finarfin overthrown, and that the sons of Feanor were driven from their
lands. Then Fingolfin beheld (as it seemed to him) the utter ruin of
the Noldor, and the defeat beyond redress of all their houses, and
filled with wrath and despair he mounted upon Rochallor his great horse
and rode forth alone, and none might restrain him. He passed over
Dor-nu-Fauglith like a wind amid the dust, and all that beheld his onset
fled in amaze, thinking that Orome himself was come: for a great madness
of rage was upon him, so that his eyes shone like the eyes of the
Valar. Thus he came alone to Angband's gates, and he sounded his horn,
and smote once more upon the brazen doors, and challenged Morgoth to
come forth to single combat. And Morgoth came."