HOME | DD

Description
A few sketches of thingol's border wards in armor and a digital concept (still unfinished but it's been sitting in the WIP file for too long) of a hunter in doriath, it could be Beleg.

The Sindar are a midpoint in terms of cultural "loft" (a somewhat frought idea when considering historic human cultures, unfashionable today but not entirely unfair I think, and for Tolkien's elves never really tied so much to technological or economic advancement as to spiritual advancement) between the lower "dark elves" of middle-earth - the Nandor in Ossiriand and the various tribes of Avarin elves throughout the world - and the returning Noldor. My mental image of the dark elves (and the few drawings it has spawned) tend to veer toward a general picture of pre-Christian, pagan "faerie" with aesthetic influences from many different "tribal" human cultures, while the Noldor (insofar as elven cultures may be compared to the stages of human culture, which I think they only can partly) draw more from what, in the broadest and most pan-worldian sense of the terms, you might call the "ancient-antique-medieval" cultural stage, ranging from the weird splendor of bronze-age Egypt or then-emerging Greece, to the gothic stone spires and keen steel swords of medieval europe/middle-east/east asia (and in many respects far beyond, though not in the "glory of science" way that has characterized human development since the early modern era) the sindar, having a foot in both worlds, I imagine as generally antique more than medieval, with much of the "faerie" aspect of the lower dark elves; the connection to and understanding of the natural world that is not really comparable to humanity in any stage of culture. This would be something the noldor are not lacking in either, they are likely just possessed of a greater overview and therefore better at interfacing with people - like men or dwarves - who don't have that faerie connection. The sindar are in this respect too a people in between, they dont have the great intercultural bond that the noldor in the north foster with the young race of men, or that comes about later between celebrimbor's people and the dwarves in eregion, but they do have their own exchanges with dwarves (predating those of the noldor) and are able to benefit from a sharing with a people of entirely different sensibilities, metalurgists and builders of stone fortresses. They (and the noldor moreso) can forgive and put in context the clumsy, heavy foot with which dwarves and men tread over ferns and hack down trees for their industry and their ever-ballooning population, respectively. And, as with the historic blending of real-world cultures, I imagine the sharing would make for many a strange and wondrous sight in Doriath of old; dwarven-carved stone halls for the Fairy King and his folk, long lean forest-wards balanced surely as birds on slender boughs in the yawning upper canopy, but in bright mail with tempered steel blades (besides, who ever saw that enchanting bamboo forest-fight in "crouching tiger, hidden dragon" and wasnt wowed by it?)

Description
A few sketches of thingol's border wards in armor and a digital concept (still unfinished but it's been sitting in the WIP file for too long) of a hunter in doriath, it could be Beleg.

The Sindar are a midpoint in terms of cultural "loft" (a somewhat frought idea when considering historic human cultures, unfashionable today but not entirely unfair I think, and for Tolkien's elves never really tied so much to technological or economic advancement as to spiritual advancement) between the lower "dark elves" of middle-earth - the Nandor in Ossiriand and the various tribes of Avarin elves throughout the world - and the returning Noldor. My mental image of the dark elves (and the few drawings it has spawned) tend to veer toward a general picture of pre-Christian, pagan "faerie" with aesthetic influences from many different "tribal" human cultures, while the Noldor (insofar as elven cultures may be compared to the stages of human culture, which I think they only can partly) draw more from what, in the broadest and most pan-worldian sense of the terms, you might call the "ancient-antique-medieval" cultural stage, ranging from the weird splendor of bronze-age Egypt or then-emerging Greece, to the gothic stone spires and keen steel swords of medieval europe/middle-east/east asia (and in many respects far beyond, though not in the "glory of science" way that has characterized human development since the early modern era) the sindar, having a foot in both worlds, I imagine as generally antique more than medieval, with much of the "faerie" aspect of the lower dark elves; the connection to and understanding of the natural world that is not really comparable to humanity in any stage of culture. This would be something the noldor are not lacking in either, they are likely just possessed of a greater overview and therefore better at interfacing with people - like men or dwarves - who don't have that faerie connection. The sindar are in this respect too a people in between, they dont have the great intercultural bond that the noldor in the north foster with the young race of men, or that comes about later between celebrimbor's people and the dwarves in eregion, but they do have their own exchanges with dwarves (predating those of the noldor) and are able to benefit from a sharing with a people of entirely different sensibilities, metalurgists and builders of stone fortresses. They (and the noldor moreso) can forgive and put in context the clumsy, heavy foot with which dwarves and men tread over ferns and hack down trees for their industry and their ever-ballooning population, respectively. And, as with the historic blending of real-world cultures, I imagine the sharing would make for many a strange and wondrous sight in Doriath of old; dwarven-carved stone halls for the Fairy King and his folk, long lean forest-wards balanced surely as birds on slender boughs in the yawning upper canopy, but in bright mail with tempered steel blades (besides, who ever saw that enchanting bamboo forest-fight in "crouching tiger, hidden dragon" and wasnt wowed by it?)