Ceasefire Now drawings = 15€ :)
Profits from the sale of my Ceasefiore Now art will help CHOCAArts buy art material + link up for drawing sessions with a Palestinian community group. Info on CHOCAArts blog and / or phone +351 969 534 520
https://artdavidmeehan.blogspot.com/p/q.html
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My vision of the character ‘Smaug’ from J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘The Hobbit’.
Pencil sketch, coloured digitally on IbisPaint X.
Here is a passage from The Hobbit describing Smaug’s appearance: “There he lay, a vast red-golden dragon, fast asleep; thrumming came from his jaws and nostrils, and wisps of smoke, but his fires were low in slumber. Beneath him, under all his limbs and his huge coiled tail, and about him on all sides stretching away across the unseen floors, lay countless piles of precious things, gold wrought and unwrought, gems and jewels, and silver red-stained in the ruddy light. Smaug lay, with wings folded like an immeasurable bat, turned partly on one side, so that the hobbit could see his underparts and his long pale belly crusted with gems and fragments of gold from his long lying on his costly bed.”
This is no landscape you could ever stand in.
No observational drawing, no safe horizon line.
This chalk experiment is a dream unfolding in color: a golden field lit from within, a scarlet seam of fire at its edge, and a storm-heavy sky pressing down with ancient weight.
It feels like a place between worlds—where the conscious and unconscious meet, where memory and imagination blur. Some might see a battlefield, others a meadow after rain, and still others a veil between life and death. That is the beauty: the painting does not tell you what it is; it invites you to confess what you see.
Psychologists say we project ourselves onto images like these. So—what do you notice first? The light? The darkness? The burning red?
Perhaps that is not about the drawing at all, but about you.
I have been listening to astrophysicist's broadcasts a lot this days. Few I like the most are Joe Rogans's with Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Cox, Sean Carroll. They talk about obviously space, extra terrestrial life but also religion, people, psychology. I realised that when you think at cosmos level or at subatomic level, the things we worry about in day to day life feel very less compared to the vastness out there or in us. So I think it is very important to get out of the city, to find clear sky and look at the stars up there. It gives a surprising energy which I don't know how to describe but feels powerful.
Against the weight of a storm-dark sky, tender stems lean forward—some bending, some breaking, some still reaching.
They hold their fire at the tips, waiting to bloom, waiting to burn, waiting to belong to light.
Perhaps this is all of us:
stretching through shadows,
searching for the thin, golden line that divides earth from eternity.
Marker, and colored pencil on paper. My partner bought me some fancy markers that have been really fun to play with. I'm thinking about making this image into a greeting card.
Imagine trading your soft bed for a deflating mattress.
Imagine food cooked under ash, a fire that smokes more than it warms.
Imagine waking at dawn with stiff muscles, yet finding yourself strangely alive.
This sketch is not just about tents, cars, and campfires.
It is about the in-between—where inconvenience and beauty wrestle, and something deeper sneaks in.
Camping reminds me: comfort is overrated, but presence is priceless.
