Lord of the Hogwarts Art

Last month some friends introduced me to Draw with Jazza.  Jazza's an Australian animator and does a bunch of how to videos, challenges, and other fun stuff.  For his March Challenge of the Month, the theme was Lord of the Hogwarts.  Anybody who knows me, knows that this is perfect!  ...Now I just had to remember my high school art classes :-/

So, I started out sketching some different ideas.  My initial idea ended up also being the one I went with, although I did seriously consider thestrals rescuing Sam and Frodo at the end...maybe another time.

Then I set about sketching out the scene

and laying down base colors.  During this whole process, I lost count of how many times I watched Jazza's How to Shade with Colored Pencils video (among others).

Getting the colors down nice and strong.

And my final picture (taken with a camera on the left, scanned on the right).

It was really fun to try my hand at art after all this time and I really like what I came up with.  The ent, Treebeard, is doing a great job mending up the Whomping Willow after Ron and Harry's unfortunate crash.