The Shire seems like one of the most peaceful places to grow up in with the green green grass, the cozy homes, and the serene atmosphere. I mean, what’s not to love?! With the help of a couple talented artists, Nicole and Minda, and an awesome mom, Britten, one extremely lucky kid has the chance to do what many of us dream about: to live in the Shire!
So, why the Shire? Britten says: “Out of all the places in Middle-earth, the Shire seemed the most baby friendly. A bunch of hobbits running around, ignoring the world, eating a bunch of food…it just seems like a happy place. Poetically, it is where the adventure begins. It all begins in in the Shire…what better place for a baby to spend their time? Think of his destiny. One room to rule them all… And when he’s 11 we plan to send him to Hogwarts (the room next door which will have a Harry potter theme.) (Funny side note…my child is way happier outdoors than he ever is indoors. He absolutely loves being outside. I think the Shire has something to do with that.)”
The room took about three months to complete and at first they started out pretty steady; about one night a week was spent working on it. During the second month that time was bumped up to every weekend and by the time the last month came along they were rushing to finish it in time for Britten’s due date. “I gave my friends a deadline of 2 days to finish it when I had one week left of my pregnancy. It needed time to dry and we still had to get furniture moved in. But I feel like those last two days were when the magic happened and all the little details got added. My favorite spot in the whole room was completed in about an hour during those last two days.” Nicole adds: “Towards the end, we were rushing to get everything done in time; there was a lot of cursing involved; at the grass… The trees… The individual leaves on the main tree… We just wanted to be done. But it was worth it!”
A lot of the inspiration for the room came from The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films, Nicole and Minda had screenshots from The Fellowship of the Ring on hand to help them create the scenery. “Neither of us had ever painted something on such a LARGE scale before, so there was a lot of trial and error involved. Minda knows more about traditional painting than me, so she suggested a gamut mask color palette which she got from artist James Gurney’s book Color and Light: a Guide for the Realist Painter.” For those of you unfamiliar with what a gamut mask, Minda can explain it for you. “It puts a limit on how many colors we could use. It makes the colors we do use look vivid even if they’re less saturated. Also it means we spend less time neutralizing colors since we’ve already limited them. Though with house paint they’re still pretty vivid.”
The colors certainly do stand out, and they do so beautifully! It’s easy to imagine yourself simply stepping into the painting and taking a stroll to the Green Dragon or to the Party Tree. “The main colors were a magenta, bright yellow, bright green and a teal color. It was our first time using a color palette like this and when we first started painting we were really skeptical about it; for example, the sky looked way too green when we put it on the walls. But in the end, thanks to color illusions, all the colors and the whole room turned out perfectly!” Who else is feeling extremely jealous that they don’t have this room in their home? You can view all of the images from this project via Nicole’s website.
Follow Nicole on Deviantart, and Tumblr, and Minda on Tumblr.
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