From the Prayer Room Week 5

I know, I know, six weeks and I've only gotten one week finished the way I initially proposed.  Sigh.

Things are a little busy here on my end.  I've decided that For the next few weeks, I'm only going to worry about the sketch portion of this project.  I'll finish "Here be Dragons", "Surrender Unto Hope", and week 3 (which I'm going to call "Ruah"), but after those I'm going to pick and choose the ones I end up painting until my schedule settles a bit.  So . . .

For weeks my mind had been turning over the character of Tulkas - one of the Valar from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion.  Nienna, Tulkas and Orome are have always been my favorite of the Valar, but the explanation of that would take to long.  Anyway, here's some excerpts from The Silmarillion about Tulkas:

But in the midst of the war a spirit of great strength and hardihood came to the aid of the Valar, hearing in the far heaven that there was a battle in the Little Kingdom; and Arda was filled with the sound of his laughter. So came Tulkas the Strong, whose anger passes like a mighty wind, scattering cloud and darkness before it; and Melkor fled before his wrath and his laughter, and forsook Arda, and there was peace for a long age.  And Tulkas remained and became on of the Valar of the Kindom of Arda; but Melkor brooded in the outer darkness, and his hate was given to Tulkas for ever after." 

"Greatest in strength and deeds of prowess is Tulkas, who is surnamed Astaldo, the Valiant.  He came last to Arda, to aid the Valar in the first battles with Melkor.  He delights in wrestling and in contests of strength; and he rides no steed, for he can outrun all things that go on feet, and he is tireless.  His hair and beard are golden, and his flesh ruddy; his weapons are his hands.  He has little heed for either past or the future, and is of no avail as a counsellor, but is a hardy friend . . . Tulkas laughs ever, in sport or in war, and even in the face of Melkor he laughed in battles before the Elves were born." 

So I went into the prayer room and this image of a laughing warrior God had been humming in my head for a few weeks.  At some point, someone read Isaiah 64 (specifically verses 1-4), and I couldn't get the idea of Tulkas out of my head for the rest of the night.  So I went with it.  Psalm 2:1 & 4-6 (thanks Rene!), Psalm 3:3-4 and Psalm 18:28-36 were also read over the course of the evening . . .

So I started trying to draw Tulkas - or the aspect of God that Tulkas embodies: a storm of righteous anger that casts down evil to make way for joy.  So I'm calling this week's sketch "Tulkas Astaldo".

I had this epic idea of what Tulkas would look like - helmet, armor, the works.  A mighty, big picture with a man like figure clothed in everything strong and imposing!

And it wouldn't work.

I nearly shredded the page drawing and redrawing the sketch.

So I went back to Tolkien to reread everything and found myself caught on this concept of Tulkas as a wrestler.  My two brothers wrestled in high school, so I know a few paltry facts about the sport, and I knew that helmet I kept trying to draw would get in the way of any wrestling.  The armor, too. So I went back to the drawing board (so to speak) and tried to put my human imagining aside in favor of the work.  And then, as if by magic, I found the sketch.  Go figure.  Goes to show that simpler is better sometimes.

Initially, I wasn't sure that I liked the final product - there was a lot of struggle even after I found the sketch.  But I think it's growing on me.

October the Twenty-Fourth

"'Where am I, and what is the time?' he said aloud to the ceiling.

'In the house of Elrond, and it is ten o'clock in the morning,' said a voice. 'It is the morning of October the twenty-fourth if you want to know.'"

-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter 1

October the Twenty-Fourth

"'Where am I, and what is the time?' he said aloud to the ceiling.

'In the house of Elrond, and it is ten o'clock in the morning,' said a voice. 'It is the morning of October the twenty-fourth if you want to know.'"

-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter 1

Philomythus to Misomythus, a poem by J.R.R. Tolkien

Very rarely do I have the urge to memorize poetry. But I do with this.


To those of you who may not be familiar with my very high esteem for BOTH these men, let me assure you that there is gold here, a great wealth of it, even if you don't understand it outright. I am very often encouraged - not necessarily in any specific or definable way - whenever I pick up any of their works.


I discovered this poem today and I hope it encourages you - whether you can define it, understand it or not.


Philo- having a strong affinity or preference for. Greek, from philos, beloved, loving.


Miso- hatred. Greek, from misein, to hate, and misos, hatred.


Mythus- really? Do I have to define this for you?

Fingon and Gothmog,

Justin Gerard

To one [C.S. Lewis] who said that myths were lies and therefore worthless, even though 'breathed through silver'.

Philomythus to Misomythus

You look at trees and label them just so,
(for trees are 'trees', and growing is 'to grow');
you walk the earth and tread with solemn pace
one of the many minor globes of Space:
a star's a star, some matter in a ball
compelled to courses mathematical
amid the regimented, cold, inane,
where destined atoms are each moment slain.

At bidding of a Will, to which we bend
(and must), but only dimly apprehend,
great processes march on, as Time unrolls
from dark beginnings to uncertain goals;
and as on page o'er-written without clue,
with script and limning packed of various hue,
an endless multitude of forms appear,
some grim, some frail, some beautiful, some queer,
each alien, except as kin from one
remote Origo, gnat, man, stone, and sun.
God made the petreous rocks, the arboreal trees,
tellurian earth, and stellar stars, and these
homuncular men, who walk upon the ground
with nerves that tingle touched by light and sound.
The movements of the sea, the wind in boughs,
green grass, the large slow oddity of cows,
thunder and lightning, birds that wheel and cry,
slime crawling up from mud to live and die,
these each are duly registered and print
the brain's contortions with a separate dint.
Yet trees are not 'trees', until so named and seen
and never were so named, tifi those had been
who speech's involuted breath unfurled,
faint echo and dim picture of the world,
but neither record nor a photograph,
being divination, judgement, and a laugh
response of those that felt astir within
by deep monition movements that were kin
to life and death of trees, of beasts, of stars:
free captives undermining shadowy bars,
digging the foreknown from experience
and panning the vein of spirit out of sense.
Great powers they slowly brought out of themselves
and looking backward they beheld the elves
that wrought on cunning forges in the mind,
and light and dark on secret looms entwined.

He sees no stars who does not see them first
of living silver made that sudden burst
to flame like flowers bencath an ancient song,
whose very echo after-music long
has since pursued. There is no firmament,
only a void, unless a jewelled tent
myth-woven and elf-pattemed; and no earth,
unless the mother's womb whence all have birth.
The heart of Man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.

Yes! 'wish-fulfilment dreams' we spin to cheat
our timid hearts and ugly Fact defeat!
Whence came the wish, and whence the power to dream,
or some things fair and others ugly deem?
All wishes are not idle, nor in vain
fulfilment we devise -- for pain is pain,
not for itself to be desired, but ill;
or else to strive or to subdue the will
alike were graceless; and of Evil this
alone is deadly certain: Evil is.

Blessed are the timid hearts that evil hate
that quail in its shadow, and yet shut the gate;
that seek no parley, and in guarded room,
though small and bate, upon a clumsy loom
weave tissues gilded by the far-off day
hoped and believed in under Shadow's sway.

Blessed are the men of Noah's race that build
their little arks, though frail and poorly filled,
and steer through winds contrary towards a wraith,
a rumour of a harbour guessed by faith.

Blessed are the legend-makers with their rhyme
of things not found within recorded time.
It is not they that have forgot the Night,
or bid us flee to organized delight,
in lotus-isles of economic bliss
forswearing souls to gain a Circe-kiss
(and counterfeit at that, machine-produced,
bogus seduction of the twice-seduced).
Such isles they saw afar, and ones more fair,
and those that hear them yet may yet beware.
They have seen Death and ultimate defeat,
and yet they would not in despair retreat,
but oft to victory have tuned the lyre
and kindled hearts with legendary fire,
illuminating Now and dark Hath-been
with light of suns as yet by no man seen.

I would that I might with the minstrels sing
and stir the unseen with a throbbing string.
I would be with the mariners of the deep
that cut their slender planks on mountains steep
and voyage upon a vague and wandering quest,
for some have passed beyond the fabled West.
I would with the beleaguered fools be told,
that keep an inner fastness where their gold,
impure and scanty, yet they loyally bring
to mint in image blurred of distant king,
or in fantastic banners weave the sheen
heraldic emblems of a lord unseen.

I will not walk with your progressive apes,
erect and sapient. Before them gapes
the dark abyss to which their progress tends
if by God's mercy progress ever ends,
and does not ceaselessly revolve the same
unfruitful course with changing of a name.
I will not treat your dusty path and flat,
denoting this and that by this and that,
your world immutable wherein no part
the little maker has with maker's art.
I bow not yet before the Iron Crown,
nor cast my own small golden sceptre down.

In Paradise perchance the eye may stray
from gazing upon everlasting Day
to see the day illumined, and renew
from mirrored truth the likeness of the True.
Then looking on the Blessed Land 'twill see
that all is as it is, and yet made free:
Salvation changes not, nor yet destroys,
garden nor gardener, children nor their toys.
Evil it will not see, for evil lies
not in God's picture but in crooked eyes,
not in the source but in malicious choice,
and not in sound but in the tuneless voice.
In Paradise they look no more awry;
and though they make anew, they make no lie.
Be sure they still will make, not being dead,
and poets shall have flames upon their head,
and harps whereon their faultless fingers fall:
there each shall choose for ever from the All.

Vermont, Costumes and All the Rest

So, a couple of weeks ago I got asked to make a set of costumes for a vacation Bible school thing that my church does every year.  Some of the teenagers were getting dressed up as characters from well known stories and interacting with the kids everyday as part of the group time.  I said, sure, no problem.

It just so happened that I was going to Vermont for a friend's wedding the Thursday BEFORE all of this was going down.  I don't know how I underestimated the time it would take to do everything, but I did.  And for two solid weeks I came home from work everyday and spent several hours working on making all of these costumes.  

Aren't they cute? From right to left we have Lucy and Edmund from "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe", Pinocchio, Dorothy from "The Wizard of Oz", Mary and Martha from "The Secret Garden" and our lovely Narrator.  Awesome and epic, right?  

I wasn't there, but I think the costumes were actually used more like this:

Pterodactyls backin' outa trouble have nothing on these guys. . . 

Also, I am very, very disappointed to have missed out on the apparently epic deep-cover Walmart adventure that was organized in search of Pinocchio's suspenders.  

Vermont was nice, though.

Some more of the stuff I'm working on.  Ugh.  I can't focus on one thing.  Bilbo and Aragorn up there are part of my attempt to put down on paper some of my personal vision for "The Hobbit" (Not that Aragorn is in  "The Hobbit", I know that, I just wanted to see if I could draw him the way he is in my head (I can't by the way)).  That's been a kick-and-a-half.  I'm sure if you've been taking a look over the past couple of weeks you've also seen that I'm doing some sketches for "The Horse and His Boy".  Here are some more I'm doing for "The Silver Chair".

These are all on top of the Robin Hood Project that I'm still working on.  And because I obviously haven't given myself enough to do and need more options, here's some comic/graphic novel stuff I am experimenting with:

I have been told that I need to learn how to say "no" to people.  I think one of those people might be myself.  

Also, I might have mentioned this before, but I really love Instagram.  Which may add to my already legendary predisposition to let art that needs to be scanned, well, not get scanned.  

Don't Worry, I'm Not Dead

I know I've been gone a while. Things have been busy. Here's some of the stuff I've been working on.

Also, I love Instagram.