Elbereth Star Kindler.

Lately I've fallen in love with Tolkien again. This irresistible world he created in my head begs to be translated into the outside world. As with all things that go on in my head, most of the essentials are lost in translation. Actually, the only thing that doesn't get hopelessly garbled are the stories; they tend to turn out better on paper than in my head. Maybe this is why I'm think I'm an English major and not an art or music major.

In any case, here is Varda, Tolkien's lady Elbereth Starkindler.
This is my fifth attempt at translating this image that Tolkien put into my head onto paper. Twice I have finished this image and been rather disappointed. The only good thing about the first one was the hands. I worked really hard on just the sketch of the hands. The only good thing about the second attempt was that it was slightly better than the first one. It's nice to see that I've made some progress. I figured out that I wanted to use black paper on the the third attempt. I started to wear a hole through the crumby construction paper with my eraser, so I didn't finish it. I might have to give the fourth version another shot at some point. It's much bigger and I have some ideas of how I want to fix it. I was playing with some materials that I don't know anything about.
She's still not quite right (even ignoring the minor proportional problems and other little things). Her face is not really how it looks in my head, but I was glad it looked like a human face and not a monkey like some of the others did. I'll get there. I've learned a lot drawing this image over and over. I feel like I have a much firmer grasp on the shape of a face, since I've had to draw it with the light coming the wrong way. The black paper is really maddening and fun.
So, the hard part is sticking with it till it's done. There are eleven more Valar and dozens of other Tolkien images that want out of my head, not to mention faces from my own stories.