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Description
A battle of mythical proportions - Balrogs fighting Ungoliant in defense of their lord Morgoth. This is actually my first ever digital painting of the battle of any sort. Since I have always been a huge admirer of Tolkien's evil creatures, this particular "mini-battle" of giants from Silmarillion was my primary choice. The idea of having such huge and intimidating creatures in battle was quite inspiring, so I had to do a little research about this particular moment from the book, reading all the necessary stories and descriptions to make this painting the best I can. That's how I found out that there are only seven Balrogs in total, that there is no particular confirmation they have wings, that Ungoliant cannot be that huge since it is vulnerable to the flaming whips of Balrogs, that Morgoth was carrying silmarils in it's right hand during this battle, etc. All of this is taken into consideration while making this painting...
The biggest challenge was to reimagine the Dark Lord, Morgoth, since IMO none of its previous paintings didn't quite manage to completely honor its description by J.R.R.Tolkien himself. In the book, Silmarillion, he described Morgoth (Melkor) "as a mountain that wades in the sea and has its head above the clouds and is clad in ice and crowned with smoke and fire; and the light of the eyes of Melkor was like a flame that withers heat and pierces with a deadly cold." I remember scratching my head and thinking to myself, how the hell will I incorporate all these "elements" in its design? Ice, fire, cold, rocks, sea...I knew from the get go that it has to be a sort of menacing knight with twisted rusty armor that has a burning crown on its helmet, but I had to think over and over again on how to incorporate these other elements into my design. In the end, I figured out to mimic the ice with the Dark Lord's blue energy light that shines through cracks in the armor, while the sea association was envisioned with the bluish mist that sweeps around his legs (which is slightly visible behind that spider web). After all, think I'm satisfied with the way it looks...
Anyway, hope you'll like this artwork and if so, make sure to press that watch button cause there will be more of these coming soon. I feel my inspiration is soaring with the completion of this painting...

Description
A battle of mythical proportions - Balrogs fighting Ungoliant in defense of their lord Morgoth. This is actually my first ever digital painting of the battle of any sort. Since I have always been a huge admirer of Tolkien's evil creatures, this particular "mini-battle" of giants from Silmarillion was my primary choice. The idea of having such huge and intimidating creatures in battle was quite inspiring, so I had to do a little research about this particular moment from the book, reading all the necessary stories and descriptions to make this painting the best I can. That's how I found out that there are only seven Balrogs in total, that there is no particular confirmation they have wings, that Ungoliant cannot be that huge since it is vulnerable to the flaming whips of Balrogs, that Morgoth was carrying silmarils in it's right hand during this battle, etc. All of this is taken into consideration while making this painting...
The biggest challenge was to reimagine the Dark Lord, Morgoth, since IMO none of its previous paintings didn't quite manage to completely honor its description by J.R.R.Tolkien himself. In the book, Silmarillion, he described Morgoth (Melkor) "as a mountain that wades in the sea and has its head above the clouds and is clad in ice and crowned with smoke and fire; and the light of the eyes of Melkor was like a flame that withers heat and pierces with a deadly cold." I remember scratching my head and thinking to myself, how the hell will I incorporate all these "elements" in its design? Ice, fire, cold, rocks, sea...I knew from the get go that it has to be a sort of menacing knight with twisted rusty armor that has a burning crown on its helmet, but I had to think over and over again on how to incorporate these other elements into my design. In the end, I figured out to mimic the ice with the Dark Lord's blue energy light that shines through cracks in the armor, while the sea association was envisioned with the bluish mist that sweeps around his legs (which is slightly visible behind that spider web). After all, think I'm satisfied with the way it looks...
Anyway, hope you'll like this artwork and if so, make sure to press that watch button cause there will be more of these coming soon. I feel my inspiration is soaring with the completion of this painting...