Gollum Emerges (2000)
Two servings of lemonade
My teen years were greatly inspired by the annual Middle-Earth calendars, rich with gorgeous painted works. I began picking them up in the early 90s, so this was the run mostly illustrated by Ted Nasmith. It always felt like a someday goal to try to land one of those. Such goals are useful spurs, even if quite often they end up mirages. That goal has long ago fallen off my list, for any number of reasons, none of which are disinterest in the subject matter!
When an earlier project had a false start that had me preemptively starting over, I was left with a large board with most of a background painted. I set it aside and figured maybe I could reuse some of it for something. I took a photo of it in my late 1960’s decorated first home studio, in the mid 90’s, after setting it aside.
