The Silmarillion

[ Maedhros and Maglor (or perhaps Fingon) ]

Recently I bought 'The Silmarillion' which I have been dying to read after I read 'Lord of the Rings' when I was twelve. It is very intriguing with all the backstory to everything that happened to the elves starting at the beginning of time with the creation of Middle Earth by Iluvatar and then surging through the betrayal and the lifetime of the elves, the creation of Man and entire history of Middle Earth.

I took the book on holiday with me and by the time the week was out I was more than a third way through. It intrigued me as Tolkien took the idea of Light and Dark Elves from Norse Mythology and transformed the idea of being light and dark to elves that have seen the light and those that have not. In this way I suppose I saw a similarity between my ideas that are in 'Halfbreed' as the Woodland Queen is supposed to be seen as a Dark Elf having not accepted modern ways (as mentioned briefly in a previous post).

As you may know, I love the 'Lord of the Rings' series and a lot of inspiration for the style and design of the nymphs has come from the elves. I therefor began looking at elven cosplay for further inspiration for the nymphs ranging from their style to their mannerisms. Elves are known to be exceptionally graceful, one with nature and extremely intelligent. I wish to weave this into the fibres of the nymphs in my coursework.

[ Thingol ]

I'm still very interested in having the character of the Woodland Queen wear a crown or some form of headpiece. Therefor I began looking into the design of characters (via cosplay) such as Thingol, Feanor, the seven sons of Feanor (Maedhros, Maglor, Celegorm, Caranthir, Curufin, Amras and Amrod), and many other High Elves (Gil-Galad, Galadriel etc.). Some I discovered to have woven bands of metal similar to crowns (as seen in the picture above with Maedhros and Maglor) whilst others had branches (i.e. Thranduil) or even antlers (see picture to the right of Thingol). I noted that only characters of great importance or high ranking seem to wear these sort of headpieces such as Maedhros or Thingol whilst elves such as Tauriel in 'The Hobbit' films is never seen with any such headpiece and even Legolas is never seen with anything worn upon his brow until late in 'The Return of the King'. This made me think that having the Woodland Queen wear a headpiece was even more vital to her character's power.

[ Thranduil and the Queen of Mirkwood ]

After having done further research into the appearance of the elves as inspiration for the nymphs, I then decided to attempt to design the Woodland Queen's headpiece. I looked at numerous designs ranging from plain woven bands to nature based and more extravagant pieces (such as the ones to the left). I came to the conclusion that I wanted the Woodland Queen's crown to be made from rough twigs that exaggerate her nature based heritage and her dark nature. Having looked further into the design, I decided that that I would like to create a Thranduil-like style headpiece that seems jagged and perhaps even darker and creepier than that worn by Thranduil in 'The Hobbit' films.