Inspiration: Ted Nasmith

Have you ever felt ashamed after discovering an artist because they are so awesome you should have known about them already? That's how I feel about Ted Nasmith. I haven't always done very much research into new artists. When I was young I just took what inspiration came to me naturally. Since I began actually seeking out other artists that I might learn from, I have discovered several masters that I had never heard of that never fail to blow my mind.

Last year I bought a calendar full of castle paintings from George R. R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice. I just bought it because I thought they were cool. Then I checked out the Silmarillion audiobook from the library and noticed some cool paintings on the packaging. I decided to look for them and discovered all these things were Ted Nasmith's paintings.

His website has tons of paintings from all of Tolkiens books as well as several others. The shear quantity is overwhelming. (I'm not sure how old Ted is but I'm guessing he's got to be pretty old to have soo much awesome art. Although I noticed he has plenty of recent work which is exciting.)

The main reason I love his work is his landscape compositions. (which is what most of his work consists of) Normally I prefer to focus on the characters more than the environment but I'd like to be awesome at both eventually and Teds work will be great for studying the ways I can handle trees, mountains, and hills.

I'll finish this up with two of his paintings I thought were great in the way they depict the same location from different views.