inspiration - Alan Lee

I've always found the drawings and paintings of Alan Lee so magical and atmospheric. It was really wonderful to find that he and John Howe had been invited to work on the films of the Lord of The Rings. His use of light is particularly good.

And lovely to get the published Alan Lee sketchbook as a present from my husband!

Drawing and Finding Characters

Looking back over my sketchbooks I found some drawings of people (!) and noticed a pattern in them. As a fiction writer, I find I sometimes draw characters in order to better understand them. The pencil drawing here is of JRR Tolkien’s Eowyn (from the Lord of the Rings). The drawing is clearly expressing one part of her character – that which is vulnerable and open. It does not really express the more war-like elements of her story. I was really thinking about this aspect of her characterisation after seeing the film interpretation and finding Eowyn more fragile than I had imagined her. A contrasting drawing is that of Elsa (a character from my own fiction manuscript).

I drew this image at a time when I was imagining her character evolving from a quite passive girlhood to a more severe adulthood. Again, this is only one element of her character, but the drawing allowed me to really witness her potential to become a dangerous and even frightening person - thus helping me in my writing!