A year later Aaron decided to test my skills. The Hobbit was coming in December and he wanted someone to paint the mighty Smaug for The Hobbit Midnight Event. A co-worker and I said we were up for the job. The girl and I tried and tried to get together to start the painting but I had a difficult time getting in contact with her. Time went by quickly and I decided I couldn't wait for her to reply any longer. It was finals time and I was stressed for time. I had only two days that I knew I could make it in to paint (I was painting at the theater) around finals before the event (I know, it was really bad planning...) I had never done anything large scale before and I had no idea how long it would take me to finish.
There was a lovely maintenance worker who helped me out a ton though. His name was Sam and he dragged the heavy 6X4' OSB plywood upstairs for me and helped me get the black background layers on. It was extremely nice of him to help me out and it really brought my stress down a ton to have him help me start the piece. Once the black background had dried I got out my paints. Sam had bought me some house paint from the store in the colors I had asked for. I didn't really know how well wall paint would work for this type of thing either. It turned out to be pretty different than the acrylics I was used to. It didn't mix the same, or as well, but once I got used to it I actually found it really fun to work with.
There hadn't been any concept art released for Smaug when I'd began my painting so my artistic interpretation was all I had to go off.
The Process:
I grabbed a few reference pictures, collected the supplies I needed and started working. At first I had no idea where to start. I drew a ghost outline to get the scale right. Sam came if a few times and probably thought I was crazy as the only thing I had down for awhile was either a strange, messed up outline or a big red spot that looked like a dragon stamp.
From the red dragon stamp I started painting the outlines of the details in yellow. After the details were in it was easy to fill the rest in with colors and shading.
Keeping the scale of the painting correct was very difficult since it was very large and I couldn't step back to look at it until it was dry and could be stood up. My painting process involved a lot of jogging around the canvas to where I needed to touch things up.
Once I'd finished everything I looked at it for a long time with a feeling that there was something important missing. It took me a long time before I realized I'd forgotten to add wings!!! I had grounded the mighty dragon with wings like hurricanes!!! Since everything was already finished and the placement wasn't ideal the wings took the sidelines and hid in the background. Forgetting them completely would have been worse so I learned to like them.
This project was so fun and I realized that large scale paintings were kind of my thing (I would have never guessed this on my own). The next year I was asked to do the other four paintings. I took a time lapse video of my Azog painting. That'll be in another post along with my other adventures with this painting!! Thanks for reading!
