Eternal Youths, Eternal Truths: Family Visions

My Happy Hobbit Childhood

Kings and Wizards and Lizardy Beasts

Besides Teatime with Elf and Bear, I made another slew of pictures from old drawings early (very early: at first at 12:10 AM, and then after connectivity troubles, again at 3:30 AM) this morning. Here they are in alphabetical title order.

Druid Circle was supposed to have them dancing around the stone on a green hill. That is so divergent from my original concept I may try it again after a little tweaking.

Duel of Doom may have started at an attempt at another Balrog fight, but with no room for the demon’s lower half I opted for a snake’s body and an indoor setting.

Fingolfin was inspired by my first reading of The Silmarillion: “But as the host of Fingolfin marched into Mithrim the Sun rose flaming in the west; and Fingolfin unfurled his blue and silver banners, and blew his horns, and flowers sprang beneath his marching feet, and the ages of the stars ended.” I didn’t realize that, as an Elf, he hadn’t been around long enough to have a white beard.

In the Barrow shows a kingly grave-ghost arising in his tomb to protect it from a sudden marauding beast. Perhaps vaguely inspired by the concept of Barrow-Wights in LOTR.

King’s Hoard was inspired from the Tolkien poem of the same name. Not a complete match.

Queen of the Universe was drawn to encourage my niece, sort of an idealized, heroic portrait. The winged cat symbolized her favorite stuffed toy that had been stowed away out of her reach. The AI program provided the slogan. Perhaps the latest of the drawings.

Sea Serpent Summon looks threatening, but the Wizard has actually called the beast to do his bidding. AI added the second staff.

An Elf, a Bear, Another Share

Just after midnight the free ChatGPT became available, and I decided to implement a scheme that I had been plotting all day. That was to produce an Elf & Bear picture from a descriptive prompt alone, and to that end I had been honing the parameters of such all day. Above you can see the result; here is the prompt I used. I enclose in square brackets my only nitpicks.

“In a Hildebrandt Fantasy painting style, a brown Bear (7 feet tall) and an Elf (3 feet tall) sit in red overstuffed armchairs in a cozy drawing-room setting. The Bear looks cheerful and the Elf a little bemused. The Bear wears a long red and white muffler around his neck; the Elf has shoulder-length tousled black hair, [a longish nose, only slightly pointed ears,] a blue tunic, and brown boots. The room has [a burning fireplace,] bookshelves full of old books, and a side table laden with a gleaming ham, a steaming pot of tea, and a heavily frosted cake. The Elf holds a cup of tea, and the Bear holds a wooden mug of ale.”

The results were the closest I’ve ever come to an adequate representation of the duo.

Out of curiosity, and to be scrupulously fair, I ran the same prompt through Grok, which, though it gave me many more variations to chose from, were all more or less in this sort of bland style:

I grow ever closer and closer to subscribing to ChatGPT, if only to stop having to wait up so late for the free service.

A Certain Hallucinatory Tone

I was feeling so bad yesterday I missed my regular Diary Entries; today I’m going to miss Tolkien Tuesday as well, I’m afraid. Still not quite 100%, as they say; probably only about 40. One thing that does not take up too much energy is AI Enhancements, and here is the next batch.

Alien Scene dates back to middle school. It is one of those kitchen-sink style drawings, where I would begin any old how and just keep adding more details.

Dain Vs. Azog is another attempt at a Middle-earth tableau.

Elf and Bear Again is a correction of an earlier enhancement. Better, but when I said the Elf was dressed all in blue, I should have mentioned brown boots. Tried an animation of it, and he inexplicably grew a white beard. Taking the hat as a clue?

Wizard Fights Demon was a very early attempt at illustrating the primal scene of Gandalf and the Balrog. I should have specified 1) that it was in a cave on a bridge, 2) the Balrog carried a broken sword, and 3) that he had wings, as per the picture I had drawn showed and as I was certain of at the time.

Not much to say about Green Dragon. Another one of the innumerable dragons I used to draw. It was in a rather unusual perspective.

Grendel I definitely drew in high school, probably about the time I drew Troll Hut. Not period accurate.

Inkraven 2 has those corrections I was talking about, though I must admit a three-footed raven was a rather novel idea and seemed to work. No jokes about removing his ‘third leg.’

Spither is the result of not wanting to have the bother of drawing all eight legs of a monster spider. I’ll include some interesting animations of it later.

The Shadow Waits was drawn not as a particular illustration but more of an ominous ‘tone poem’ about doom waiting in the falling dark.

Chat GPT keeps setting the time for my sessions later and later into the night. I’m thinking of just skipping a day and then seeing if it will reset to an earlier time. Ideally about 8 PM. Or just breaking down and paying the $20 a month for expanded service.

Monkish Me

This one is based on an actual photograph of me. In the original I am sitting at the kitchen table piled with dishes and reading a magazine, perhaps Newsweek.  You can still vaguely see the kitchen cabinets in the background.

The House on the Cliff was a very simple sketch.

A Dark Lord on a Dark Throne, if not the Dark Lord. This was another drawing from middle school; I did not have a very clear idea of Sauron at the time. What I did have was a half-size spiral notebook that I would draw in. I was surprised years later when Greg Hildebrandt produced a painting that was eerily similar.

Eighty-Three commemorates my first drawing of 1983; the calendar is a clue, and the date is woven in runes into the tapestry om the table. How well the picture reproduces the runes or the numbers is moot.

Melichus illustrates another scene from The Face in the Frost. Prospero and Roger Bacon peer in on the evil wizard as he’s learning a powerful spell to destroy the world.

Orc Guard is just that; I would often idly draw Orcs; since they were ugly and irregular it didn’t quite matter how they turned out.

The Sword in the Stone is self-explanatory.

But the jewel of the crop has to be Troll Hut; a Troll and his Wolf wait to ambush the owner of the hut. He looks very much like a Norse Troll, or even a Drauger. I include the drawing to show all the original detail.

I meant to write more details, but I had a rough night and a pretty rough morning.

Sunday Tour Through the Past

Fir Castle was another early production of mine, made special at the time by using map colors to shade it in. Next is The Old Fountain, an early exercise in layering. Before that, most of my efforts were straight line-ups along the red margins of the notebook paper. Inkraven looks pretty good, until you realize he has three claws, a feature not in the original sketch. I'd probably make the potion red next time. Monastary expresses the rain better than I ever could and elaborates the tiny stick figure I had climbing the hill into a real character. Morg City was an early expression of the capital of Forlan; the original was drawn in ink without a smudge. I now have a more complex idea of it in my head. It features what appears to be the King Vez Memorial Rollercoaster. Lastly is another shot at Elf & Bear, from an admittedly rather sketchy sketch. A lesson on giving explicit notes in your prompt; Bear was strangely (though perhaps not inexplicably) interpreted as a polar bear, perhaps taking a hint from his muffler. The Elf should be wearing all blue, and is oddly proportioned.

Maybe I should upgrade my account to $20 a month. That would make corrections a more affordable endeavor in terms of time; as it is, I’m lucky if I can do 6 or 7 images a night.