new year new m... aedhros 🥳 yahoo!! i think i hv to return to my roots and devote entire sketch pages to him again bc i was checking my archive and realised the last time i drew him properly was exactly one year ago holy moly..... anyways the sketches are divided into valinor -> angband/recovery -> himring and amon ereb eras so i could experiment w/ how i think he may differ in each :D
hi! i love your art, and i especially love the way you design the character’s outfits! they always look super cool and cohesive. do u have any advice for drawing clothing? (especially design wise) whenever i try and draw outfits my brain blanks unless i have an exact reference lol
Hi anon<3<3<3
I like world building, so first, I look to see if the place where the person I´m designing is described geographically, where they live, and their lifestyle. If not much is said, I look at the lands around and go from there.
I mostly put a focus on the weather, but mostly lifestyle and wealth. Of course the fauna near the person is important too, and if they have the possibility to get transported goods.
I made three versions of Maedhros from his three times living in different climates, here they are shortly, a more detailed description are down - note; this is Noldorin fashion and I depict other groups in different styles
These notes are only about the clothing, not jewelry, hair, or cosmetics.
Maedhros!Valinor:
The underwear is made of linen and here a long skjorte with a tied inner cloth with loose breaches to accompany Valinor stable weather that can easily cool you down and keep you warm at the same time. The edges of the skjorte is embroidered as it is meant to be shown. This has been seen a lot over history that an undergarment or something "sexual" meant to be hidden is shown in a glimpse - a modern equivalent would be showing the rim of your boxers or a bra strap. The clothes are long and layered and reaches the ground, unpractical for any manual labour or any wear that doesn´t have clean floors. The colours are saturated and a lot of white is used too.
Detail notes: While not noticeable I HC that Maedhros white robe is lined with gold cloth to match the embroidery around it, which is made on top of it where his purple robe is made with brocade.
Maedhros!Himring:
The underwear is not tighter and shorter to give better modality and keep warmth rather than cold. The sleeves are sewn to look big as heavy clothes can´t be used the same way, the sleeves have therefor become a new fashion symbol as well as status, it makes the arm look bigger and therefor the wear stronger, as well as give something to look at now that heavy fabrics that reaches the hands aren´t a choice anymore. All the robes reach just below the knee to still cover and fill, but also to make it easy to move in. The clothes are now looking broader to show strength and satiety. - Beleriand is in war, food is scarce, especially in the north close to Angband, and clothes are now made to make you look fat and well fed in this part of Beleriand. Fur has become an important aspect of fashion too, especially if sewn into clothes as padding or trims. Damask is used more in Himring than brocade which is used most in Doriath and Hithlum court.
Black is used due to the symbolism, but also as it is an expensive colour to hold as black as possible, it shows that someone with so much black clothes has the money to uphold it and to constantly buy new clothes to replace the old ones, as it is one of the easiest to break. - Due to Himring´s long winter and harsh climate, flowers and other forms of fauna quickly make themselves into fashion and are depicted on almost everything from walls, to tables, to clothes, to windows, and so on.
Maedhros!Amon Ereb:
The clothes here are still made to look you well fed but not in the same way as it was in Himring, as this part of Beleriand was hit much later with scarce food and therefore has a stronger hold on thin and strong fashion.
While still black, it is more gre,y which shows a fall in wealth, due to the visibility to now keep the clothes functioning for as long as possible without the possibility to carelessly throw it away.
Genreal notes on Noldorin Clothes:
Clothing are a social marker and always has been therefore it´s the same for the Noldor. There is a difference between the classes of society in how clothes are worn and the decorations used, to quickly show rank and status to those around you. Usually, the less practical your clothes are, the richer you are.
The style of clothes is also tied to your rank, meaning someone of one rank can´t wear a certain type of clothing style as that is outside of their social class. Different textile techniques are also sometimes defined by your rank.
Notes on fabric and technics:
Brocade and damask are also used a lot due to the hardship of producing it, where a cheaper solution would be printed patterns to those outside of the elite. Brocade is usually worn to court, where damask is a more daily solution as it is mostly made on linen and doesn´t appear as three dimensional as brocade.
Linen and cotton are usually worn as under clothes due to their lightweight and breathable properties, they are also used for pants. = flax fibers and cotton plant
Silk is usually worn as some form of overwear due to it reflecting light and expensive manufacture. = Silkworms cocoon
Velvet is usually used for clothing padding, or pants. = special loom usually with silk although linen, cotton and wool can be used
Cashmere is used for thin over clothes and usually only for decoration. = cashmere goats
Wool is used rarely and if it is it is used as padding in colder climate, so something you have in between your under and over clothes. It is also and important aspect of the military later in Beleriand as it is easy to get and you stay warm even in rain. = hair of animals (sheep, goats, cows, dogs, etc)
Rayon is used a lot by the Noldor too as it is easier to get than silk and hold a more stable temorature. Rayon is usually chosen for a pieces of clothes that requires a lot of embroidery silk wouldn´t be able to hold or as a tunic. = wood pulp
Notes on dyes:
Dyed clothes can be categorised in two; cheap home dyed fabrics, with local based dyes and expensive professional dyed fabrics, coloured with imported and expensive ingredients. The more clearer a colour the wealthier. - the colour mentioned here is what I draw him in.
White although not seemingly much is expensive due to the ingrediency being hard to obtain and not something you just get shipped to you, it shows wealth as the common folk of the Noldo really uses it and are more drown to easy colourful clothes instead, it also symbolises purity as it absorbs colours better than any other dyes. - Easy = sun bleaching (never really white white more like a pale yellow or brown) Expensive = chemical help
Black requires the fibres to be dyed repeatedly therefore, it is also a symbol of wealth, although it is less eye catching which also makes it the colour for humility and plainness. Black fabrics also holds the shortes amount of times if dyed with alum. - Expensive = mix of the basic dyes: (madder, weld and woad, alum), acorns, galnuts, oak apple
Yellow/gold although and easy colour to obtain is still a colour used by the elite as it can represent gold as a heraldic colour. - Easy and mild yellow = tansy, goldenrod, birch leaves and wild chervil Expensive and satured yellow = turmeric, saffron, onion skin, marigold, chamomile
Red/Scarlet is at times some of the most expensive due to the material used to get a scarlet red. Easy still expensive but cheaper = madder root (the root are harvested once a year - the leaf are harvested the whole year but gives a slightly different colour - madder can also give pink), brazilwood (can also make pink and purple) Expensive = raisin dragonsblood, kermes, scale insects
Purpel/violet is at times more expensive than gold due to the ingredients. - Easy = kermes and alum Expensive = dog whelk
In which Elwing became Maedhros’s apprentice, learning everything she had to learn to become a noble lady of the Noldor, from politics, to maths, astrology, language and etiquette; she soon became a trusted counselor and her right hand.
The gates of Amon Ereb had the air of a funeral about them as the twins prepared to leave. Elros could not figure out who was supposed to be the dying party. One by one the inhabitants of the fort came to say their farewells. Friends and enemies and teachers and mentors and captors. It did not matter anymore, the time had finally come.
He turned to Elrond as he pulled at the sleeves of his tunic. It was too old top and just slightly to small to be his. Maedhros had pulled it out of some long forgotten chest in the depths of the stronghold. Outdated garb of some soldier from the House of Fingolfin. There had been an argument a few nights before of what standards to bear. In the end it was Maedhros who said "They will shoot you down from a mile away in those."
So here they were in faded blue.
Elrond looked to him and shrugged. It was early, they had a little time to wait. They had wondered together whether the Fëanorians would come and see them off or skulk about by some narrow window above. It could go either way but Elros hoped they would come. He had one of those uncomfortably certain feelings that he would not see them again after today.
All of a sudden the doors at the far end of the courtyard open and Maedhros appeared like a billow of smoke. His face was set grim as ever and Elros couldn’t help standing a little straighter as his gaze combed over the pair of them. He shot a small apology to the ever-shining star above them. Finally Maedhros sighed, seemingly satisfied.
"You are not to die." he rumbled
Elros' laugh petered off as he came and stood before him. He could bear the old Lord’s stares better than most but just the awareness that this would be the last time threw him off kilter.
"Too many people love you for you to die now, do you understand?"
His mouth went very dry but he nodded, "Yes sir."
"These are for you." Maedhros said, turning away finally and bringing out a pair of swords.
They lifted them up in the half light of the dawn. One they recoginse, it was Idril's or perhaps King Turgon's, long ago in Gondolin. Their mother always called it Idril's sword. The other was given to Elros and he did not know it. But it was beautiful and well balanced and the way the metal sang... it must have been made before the Sun, maybe even in the Blessed Lands themselves.
He ran his fingers over the hilt. Valar, he fears he would be too afraid to use it. Perhaps that is how it had survived for so long.
"The bearers of these weapons were noble and cunning,” Maedhros said gravely, “if you can manage to be both you may escape the sort of fates that befell them."
"Seems we have little choice," said Elrond wryly as he fastend the sword to his sadle.
Maedhros let out a soft breath, the long spidery scars that stretched across his twitched. The closest thing to a smile, he has ever managed. There was another silence and a shift in the air. This was the farewell, he would say no more. Elros bit his lip turning to the path leading down from the fortress.
"Is he coming?" Elrond asked softly, "Or do we leave?"
Before an answer could be made, the doors slam open again and the last tension in Elros' chest eased. Maglor would not look at them as he approach nor answer any of their questions, instead he grabbed his hand sharply and pressed something small and gold into it. He turned it over between his fingers, eyes wide.
"This is..." his voice trailed of as Maglor moved on to Elrond, draping a cloak over his shoulders. Elros called after him weakly, "How?"
“They are yours. I took them from Sirion," Maglor clicked his tongue, fussing with the clasp at Elrond's throat, "You were covered with this when I found you."
He ran his hand along the hem of it before shaking his hand out. Elros was not surprised that what latent magic was left in the cloak of Luthien did not seem fit to be touched by a Son of Fëanor.
"You think I did not know you would leave us someday?” Maglor said, folding his arms across his chest and fixing his eyes on the gate, “Make no mistake, there will be those who will call you imposters and traitors and spies.” He nodded as Elros place the ring on his trembling finger, “But you must not forget who you are.”
He glanced between the two of them and looked as though he had more to say, but the only thing that passes his lips were the words
"Be good."
Then with uncharacteristic abruptness he began to tramp back inside. Elrond called after him suddenly, reaching out and pulling him into a hug. Maglor was stiff for only a moment before collapsing into his arms drawing him close and whispering words only the two of them could hear.
Elros glanced at Maedhros, who watched the scene with his usual steady bemusement. When they had been younger it had been a common enough sight. All they had out here was eachother at the end of the day and though even back then they had known the Fëanorian were not good people, they were always kind. ,
Then the star had appeared in the sky and everything changed. A glaring, ever present reminder of exactly what had brought them here. And that their being here had no more practical purpose. He and Elrond had been 16 and more than old enough to understand what they had forgotten at six.
And there was kindness still there but it did not come so simply. And love that left an aftertaste of guilt.
Maedhros caught his eye quite by accident and gave him a questioning look. When he was little he had to jump, he still sort of does to wrap his arms across his shoulders and pull him down into an embrace. He heard him sigh as he rested his head on his shoulder.
Im sorry, he prayed at the last star in the sky as dawn tried to push its way through the dark clouds
Under a veil of scarlet hair he allows himself a few tears. It feels steady and smells like home.
Im sorry im sorry imsorryimsorryimsorry
One last time.
And then its done. Maedhros gives his shoulders a quick squeeze and let him go.
“You will be alright, I have seen it.”
Elros wished he could say the same. All his dreams are of fire.Maglor pulled him aside, murmuring a soft blessing and planting a kiss in his hair. By the time they had mounted their horses the last two sons of Fëanor had disappeared from the courtyard.
They knew they would still be watching from the walls long after they disappeared from view. They knew that despite consistant assurances, there would be a small retinue of soldiers tailing them a good way to Gil Galad's camp. But the time had come.
By the time Elrond leaves for Gil-Galad's camp, he's also been handling most of the healing at Amon Ereb for years. Few of the Feanorians can heal any more, bloodstained as they are, and even as a youth, it's clear that Elrond is remarkably talented at it.
Many of the Feanorians use sleeping draughts. Some of them, especially the former thralls, are plagued by nightmares. Maglor and Maedhros are so burnt out by the oath at this point that they can barely sleep at all.
Elrond is the one who mixes the medicine, quietly in the little room they've started calling the apothecary. No one watches. He gathers most of his own herbs too, from the gardens inside the fortress or the decaying land around it– no one goes with him, because the elves will be noticed by Morgoth's forces and attacked, but somehow, Elrond always slips by unnoticed.
Elrond leaves to get supplies. Elrond comes back. Elrond makes the sleeping draught, every afternoon. Maglor and Maedhros– and plenty of others– drink it without question every evening. They wake up the next morning, and there Elrond is, smiling and asking how they slept.
To most of the Feanorians, who've already started whispering about Elrond's kindness, this doesn't seem strange.
But Maedhros wonders. Maedhros knows that it would be near impossible to tell if the herbal draught had been tampered with. Maedhros knows that many of the herbs around Amon Ereb are poisonous, even lethal. Maedhros knows that the forested lands around Amon Ereb, sick as they are, would gladly shelter Elrond and Elros all the way to Gil-Galad's camp.
Maedhros knows all these things. What he doesn't know is why. Why Elrond stays, why Elrond helps them. And part of him– the part worn down by everything that's already happened to him– is suspicious of that. But he still takes the sleeping draught every night. And Elrond is still there every morning. And Maedhros never quite works up the courage to ask.
My entry for day 4: blood of @russingon-week 2026!
His blue and silver banner
By Ethele_Feanarion(@anahrive)
Rated T Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
TW: torture (mentioned), PTSD symptoms, Grief, Mentioned Dead Fingon.
Part 10: Drawn from Telperion's light
“Mae?” he waited a few minutes, but the other did not seem to have noticed his entrance, or his call, so he tried again “Brother?”
Nothing happened, the grey eyes of Maedhros had a veil over; his breathing was so low and far apart that made them skip a heartbeat at all times, fearing their eldest will just stop breathing all together. Less than a full moon before, in the midst of their retreat towards Ossiriand he saw his brother fading away, dying; they had not talk about it, he had not dare asked. But Maedhros, that after the decades of captivity had grown harsh, brutal, distant, silent, and reclusive was now empty. There was no other word, many times he had used it to describe the redhead after the rescue, when he questioned if Fingon had done the right thing or not. However now, faced with the recent version of his dear elder brother he knew himself a fool, lost and torn were accurate terms for the past, for now it was the real and authentic empty hröa.
“Maedhros?” it was as it had been in Mithrim, he did not dare touch his brother, afraid of brining pain, or worse, making himself the hitting bag to his brother rattle mind, which will only hurt the other even deeper. “Russo?”
That did it, in a wrong way. The obscured gaze flick to him embedded with such grief that it felt as a hand had come to close over his own throat “Do not use that name.” He had to swallow twice before words found their way out, not only the pressure of the sorrow upon the grey eyes, but also the ragged tone of voice, clearly abused; his brother had been crying then, screaming probably.
“There is a horse, came to the doors of Amon Ereb a few hours ago, bearing the colors of the Crown, of Barad Eithel, he—”
“Caranthir can assign a use for it.” The words were said with anger, clearly wanting to be left alone, dismissing him for the twelve time of the day.
“He is unapproachable, and I thin—”
“That is your realm of expertize, do not pester me with insignificant things, Kanafinwë.”
Bitting on his own tongue hard he eat the answer to that, he is hurting, he is grieving, he does not mean it; it was starting to be his own ‘mantra’ that emulated Maedhros’ one, since they had set foot on Amon Ereb there has been no shortage of Maedhros’ ill temper, words hurtful in every single way and turn. “I believe it is Fingon’s stallion.”
It made his soul shrink that the only reaction he got was silence, no difference or change in his brother frame, after some time he stood up eyes not fully open as it was since that day, looking at him with annoyance. “Lead the way.”
