The Dysfunctional House Of Finwë At One Of Its Finest Moments, Work In Progress.

Took a break from england to listen to the new History of Byzantium and I'm just immensely charmed by the anecdote about how the Niceans very carefully brought Mongol ambassadors to court via the route that required going through as many mountain passes as possible to try and minimize how invadable-by-horse-archers they seemed.

So this Monday I went to see Ghost live in Milan. To say that I absolutely loved it would be and understatement, so to celebrate my first ritual here are, in order of appearance:

A oil sketch of prequelle-era Copia

A screenshot study from the Spillways music video.

The Ghost obsession is going strong. I just wish I had more time to paint them🥲

speaking of doodles I never finished baby I’m brining and london boys song posters why did I never finish youuuuu

Savageland - Salazar's camera roll

I’m absolutely obsessed with the reddit side of the Tolkien fandom, in particular, this discussion regarding how Sauron fits the ring on his finger, as well as penal compensation a la Lord Farqaud style

Fly or die (the Last Greenseer)

I was reading A Song of Ice and Fire (again) and I felt like painting Bran's "fly or die" dream. The problem is that my brain is broken and I ended up thinking about the Three Eyed Crow and how he probably may have learned greensight the same way from his predecessor... so here is Brynden Rivers being taught the fine art the greenseer by almost being impaled on oniric spikes.

(In my headcanon this happened while he was recovering from the Redgrass Field)

I only got into Ghost in december but I am obsessed with their music. It's as if the band was taylor - made to perfectly fit my taste.

So to celebrate the birthday of the man behind the mask here's a pencil study of Cardinal Copia from the Rats music video.

I think I'll paint it with either watercolour or gouache when I have a little spare time.

Is it me or the content for adults policy in tumblr now is weird? Like a drawing of a guy in a bathrobe is suddenly "adult content'. Like have you ever been at the beach?

Some of the pages and covers of Percy Shelley’s notebooks (1811-1822) — accessed through the Digital Bodleian Library

It makes me so, so angry when I see those posts that are like "HORRIFYING EARLY PLASTIC SURGERY RESULTS FROM WW2," because all of those lists are full of images that aren't the final result and are used for pure shock value. Harold Gillies, who performed most of those surgeries, was an incredibly talented surgeon. Here are some images of the full results of his surgeries.

I need to emphasize that I can't post the "before" pictures that go with these because the men did not have faces. The injuries were so extensive that these men were missing nearly all of their facial features, and through cutting-edge techniques that "looked scary" at the time (e.g. extensive skin grafts), Gillies saved these men from a medical nightmare.

Gillies performed the world's first ftm bottom surgery for trans man Michael Dillon and pioneered mtf bottom surgery! Respect his legacy.