Beth Lindley

artist | south wales

[bethlindley-art]

decided to try and draw éowyn from lotr to practice drawing portraits.

I think I'm going to focus on drawing individual features next, I still don't get eyes 😭

[bethlindley-art]

decided to try and draw éowyn from lotr to practice drawing portraits.

I think I'm going to focus on drawing individual features next, I still don't get eyes 😭

[bethlindley-art]

Cats of baldur's gate!

[bethlindley-art]

some silly dark urge sketches

[bethlindley-art]

Artist Study: Frank Frazetta

Above is a study of Frank Frazetta's "Woman with Spear". Frank Frazetta (1928-2010) was an American artist, known for his fantasy paintings and mastery of drawing human anatomy. I wanted to try out new techniques/ideas and thought I'd practice inking as a potential medium for my uni illustration project. I wanted to try a different approach to inking - I usually just use hatching and cross hatching for the darker areas of a piece, but I really like the graphic contrast of light and dark here so I'll be sure to apply that to my own ink pieces in the future.

[bethlindley-art]

Artist Inspiration: Dante Gabriel Rosetti

In the last few years, I've found that one of my favourite art movements in history was The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

Founded in London in 1848 by a group of young artists and poets, they were opposed to the idealisation of Renaissance master Raphael by The Royal Academy, seeking to paint with more intense colours and greater details. They were known for their historical and religious paintings but also paintings depicting scenes from literature and poetry. They also share similarities with The Romantic movement, being fond of depicting scenes of love and death.

One of the principal members of this movement (as well as one of my favourite artists) was Dante Gabriel Rosetti (1828 - 1882).

Above are two paintings by him that have wonderful colour palettes that I'd like to take inspiration from for my own work

FIG. 1 - Proserpine (1874), makes use of deep greens and blues, which goes well with the subject's dark hair.

FIG. 2 - In Joan of Arc (1864), the subject's red gold hair is matched with clothes and complimented by the deep blue background, as well as her bright blue eyes.

FIG. 3 - I've created some swatches of the basic colours that make up these paintings.

Since I had my watercolours out I also practiced using them by painting a tomato.

[bethlindley-art]

New illustration project

[originally posted on my website 14/11/2021]

For this semester's uni project I decided to illustrate an ancient Welsh story, Culhwch and Olwen. I grew up being fascinated by mythology and folklore, and in particular the dark and mysterious stories known as the Mabinogion. These stories were passed down orally since ancient times, were written down in the Welsh language in the middle ages, then translated by Lady Charlotte Guest in the nineteenth century. When choosing one of these stories I settled on Culhwch and Olwen, since it's perhaps one of the lesser known of them and has a less tragic ending than most of the others. I own several different books on the Mabinogion, my most recent purchase being an illustrated version by celebrated fantasy artist Alan Lee (known in particular for his illustrations of the Lord of the Rings), which was a huge inspiration for this project.

Above: an illustration by Alan Lee from The Mabinogion.