Elvish Trees

Hello again,

Tonight, I am pleased to share with you my latest personal project - "Elvish Trees", in which I was inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth Elf culture. For stylistic reference I looked at the illustrations in The Lord of The Rings novels but created my own original designs which I could imagine to be on things like banners of the different elvish families.

I started out, as usual, with pencil sketches.

Then, I finessed each sketch in Adobe Illustrator and established my colour palettes. After which, I brought the rendered trees into Photoshop to add some texture effects.

Alda
“Alda”, in Quenya meaning "tree"

Ornë Ornë in Quenya meaning 'slender tree'

Lûth Galadh
“Lûth Galadh”, in Sindarin meaning "Spell-Tree"

Prints can be found on my Society6 and RedBubble shops. More merchandise will be made available in the following weeks. 

That's it for now. :)

August Sneak Peeks

Over land, by the sea

He walks silently

Through the ancient forests green

He navigates unseen

Hi!

Today, after scanning some new paintings and removing absolutely all the dust specks from them, I've decided to share a few sneak peeks. They're of a magical, ghostly lynx character. I've decided to go with green colour palettes for these illustrations because I've missed painting with green so much. I've spent most of the year working with blues, whites and purples depicting winter. And now that the warm weather might soon be over - I thought I better get some summery imagery into my projects. Anyway, have a look:

As you might be able to tell - I've used the same pose of the lynx walking. I was playing around with scale and different environments. I painted the lynx in the green and white forest setting first, and then I had an urge to paint him again but TINIER! So, I ended up making a miniature painting that is 2.5 x 4.5 inches. I get a certain kick out of drawing as small as I can. This isn't the smallest I can do, but for I'll save that miniature mindset for another time.

Here is a work-in-progress photo of it for scale. (I have small hands, for the record.)

Media: coloured waterproof inks + watercolour paints + gouache + microns

That's all for now! Thanks for visiting!


All images are ©Mariya Olshevska and may not be used or re-purposed without the artist's consent.

Arnve's Exile - Comic Project

Here are my completed 8 pages of comic story for my latest project. The story isn't over (in my mind) and I may continue drawing pages in my spare time, when inspiration strikes.
I call it "Arnve's Exile" - Arnve being the name I've given the main character.

"With the coming of the tide

And with the endless violet night,

Somebody new is brought ashore

To test the lands of time once more"

"Having the vines blocking way back

She must by some means keep on track,

The dark and deadly chasm overcome

And not to fear and dread succumb."

Info:
Written and Illustrated by Mariya Olshevska
"Original" pages are 8.5 x 11 inches
Bristol/water color paper
Koh-i-Noor color inks
0.05 + 0.1 micron pens and tracing paper for the inks

My basic process was: small thumbnails (mini roughs) ---> tight pencils ---> inked 11x17 pages ---> lettering and panel layout in Illustrator ---> printing on watercolor paper and painting with waterproof colored inks. The painting took between 12-16 hours I think.

Anyway - there are quite a number of things I know could/should be changed and the project looks quite different from what I originally envisioned it to be...but oh well. Next time will be better!


Thanks for reading! :)

Somewhere Only We Know

Summer Illustration Course - Assignment 3

For this project we to go crazy and illustrate something that was inspired by a speech, literary passage poem, or song.
I illustrated my interpretation of the song: "Somewhere Only We Know" by Keane, specifically this passage:

“I came across a fallen tree
I felt the branches of it looking at me
Is this the place we used to love?
Is this the place that I've been dreaming of?”

Concept Sketch

light penciling

inked

decided to add a splash of light colour and also some hummingbirds:)

 Info:

Strathmore Bristol Smooth paper
9 x 12 inches
Rapidograph line work + watercolour paints

Happy Thursday!