the house of elrond's next-door neighbor

second act: the house of elrond's next-door neighbor

now i'm working on the house of elrond’s next-door neighbor. arghhhh. the buildings are driving me crazy. okay, that wasn’t entirely a hobbit-like thing to say, but buildings are so... unforgiving, with all those straight lines. especially elven buildings. i prefer painting trees.

anyhow, in the original painting by ted nasmith, the buildings are very light in color and have a shimmering glow. i’d love to paint that, but i don’t have the time nor the experience to get those nuances of light. maybe that will be my long-term project—to make the house glow. at this point, it looks just like a normal, earthling house.

i struggled with the curves on the eaves, the turret on the roof--just about everything. maybe i'll cover the parts i don’t like with overhanging trees. i don’t suppose the elves would let their foliage go all crazy like that, but maybe this is a scene from just after they leave middle earth.

just a few sections left, including the waterfalls, and then we’re ready to paint in some shading and details. i'm saving my paint and keeping track of how i mix it, just in case it dries up.

as with all second acts, there was a struggle. i'm looking forward to act iii.

so, while i'm seriously avoiding mundane life, at least i can get lost in the valley of rivendell...

scaling the walls of rivendell

i ran out of black paint—not good when you’re doing shading. home depot saved me.

1. 8 oz samples of paint for $3 in any color means i can have a veritable paint frenzy.

2. the place was empty--nobody was thinking about home improvement on new year’s eve, i guess.

here's how the mural is progressing:

after the trees, we started mixing colors for the granite walls. "gray morning" and "scotland road" worked well. i mixed the colors in dog and cat food cans and empty cottage cheese containers.

santino wanted a gray look. i wanted a green look. so, we compromised. i also wanted a golden glow on one of the mountains--it's almost too light to have a waterfall in front, but we'll make it work.

a couple of things are tricky here.

1. lighting--in the real alpine look, and also in the original painting, the mountains in the background are brightly lit and almost fade off into mist. i wanted that look, but i also wanted one mountain in to have a golden glow to remind us this is rivendell and not, say, the yosemite valley or lauterbrunnen. not sure this is going to work, but i like the coloring.

2. texture--man, it's hard to paint on this wall. the surface is so bumpy that straight lines are super tedious to paint. i'm not looking forward to doing the buildings--at least the trees are a little forgiving. in retrospect--gosh, should i have just painted this on a nice, flat, wall-sized plywood board and then attached it to the wall? not only would the surface be smooth, but also it would be portable. i can just imagine the day i put my house up for sale--a broken heart on santino's side, and confusion on the buyer's side. i guess i'll have to stay in this house for a while.

when we paint details, we'll add trees to the mountain tops and onto bluffs on the mountains. i love adding the details--just gotta get through this first phase.

next up: the house of elrond's next-door neighbor....