Let’s Draw ‘The Hobbit’
PROMPT: H - Hobbit — Day 1/26 days of drawing the Hobbit
TEN MINUTE ARTIST PROMPT
H - Hobbit
"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."
I made a pinterest board with some references here.
Note on the practice (and this series)
Every day I write a drawing prompt and meditation or open letter. The prompts are meant to be done in 10 minutes but sometimes we get carried away and that’s fine, but the goal is to build a daily practice in as little as 10 minutes a day.
Some do this for the pure joy of it. Others do it to bring more creative joy into their existing creative practice. Some are starting the journey, others have drawn over 500 pages, 10 minutes at a time!
Currently we’re working through a set of 26 prompts, inspired by the children’s classic, ‘The Hobbit’, you can take a look at all the prompts in advance, but we’ll be working on them in a particular order here.
The hobbit pictured above does not appear is not from the book, he comes much later. I drew him a month or 2 before I got my agent and my first book. The series of Lord of the Rings themed illustrations I did as personal project leading up to that had a big part to play.
Working on this series gave me a huge mindset shift, instead of trying to make work for an agent or for a publisher, I was making work for myself. This work was personal.
Now, I still kept in mind all the principles I was learning about illustrating children’s books. But I wasn’t second guessing, I was letting myself have the final say.
Sometimes we give our final say to a checklist of what the industry is looking for, and it’s good to have knowledge of that, but I think you need to absorb all that info and then almost forget it and instead get lost in the making.
So in this series I’m hoping to achieve that, I’m hoping to reconnect to something in me, it was said that Tolkien and C.S Lewis didn’t so much create their fantasy worlds, as mush as they had access to this fantasy worlds and simply told the stories of the characters they saw when they were there.
Tim Burton said it a different way, that all creatives create, because they want to recreate the world as they saw it as children.
There is a way of seeing that is required when making work for children. Beyond the skill, beyond the market savvy. And that is what I’m aiming to access over the next few days, and I invite you all to come along!
I’ve create a gallery for us to share our hobbit drawings, and references, and chat about the journey:
If you want to share it on instagram and others you can use #26daysofdrawingthehobbit
If you know someone who could use some daily inspirations and encouragement, invite them to join us!
