Interview with Silmalope by Dawn by silmalope

Silmalope often makes artwork for our SWG challenges and is doing the art for Shadow's presentation "The Aromantic in Tolkien" at Mereth Aderthad 2025. Dawn spoke with Silmalope about their inspiration as a creator of Tolkien-based fanworks, their connection to Shadow's topic on ace-aro characters, and the importance of diverse representation in fanworks.

Dawn: Where can we find your fanworks?

Silmalope: I'm on the SWG as Silmalope, and I also have a dedicated art blog on Tumblr @silmalope. It's a bit of a toss-up whether I end up posting on one or the other or both, but pretty much everything is on at least one of the two.

Dawn: How do you create your art, and what does your creative process look like?

Silmalope: Probably pretty standard. My digital drawing app of choice is Procreate on iOS. I usually sit down with a concept already in mind – for example “Goldberry sitting under a willow tree wearing Tom's hat” – and I'll do some iterative pencil sketches to get the shapes right. At that point, if I don't have a design for the character, I’ll go and make one. Then I come back to the piece to add expression, clothing, hair, and background details. After that, I do some light and shadow blocking, color, shading, highlights, and fix anything else that needs fixing.

I'm pretty slow and very indecisive, so I might spend anywhere from ten to twenty hours on a detailed piece. My record is forty hours for one piece, but that was a special case that involved some pretty catastrophic layering errors. So, hopefully, I won't repeat that!

Dawn: When I was looking through your work prior to this interview, you have such strong visions of the characters. Do you have a picture of them in mind or does that evolve as you're working on them?

Silmalope: I pretty much never know what a character looks like until I start drawing them. When I'm designing a character, I want to make sure that they’re visually recognizable, but also that you can get a sense of their personality. If they’re more relaxed and playful, I might give them loose and bouncy hair, for example. Or if I think they're more straight-laced, more elaborate braids – details like that. I also love looking at different fantasy-inspired outfits and coming up with new ones.

That’s really one of the things I love about drawing for The Silmarillion. You have so much artistic freedom to decide what you want your characters to look like – and it’s always a nice challenge to try to differentiate characters whose in-text descriptions are pretty similar.

Dawn: All of those black-haired, gray-eyed Noldor, for example! I'm not much of an artist myself, so when you said your creative process is pretty standard, I was like, "I guarantee you what is not gonna be standard for me!" I'm listening and learning right now.

So what draws you to Tolkien? Or what is your favorite part of the legendarium? Looking through your work, you have such a nice variety. Where some artists are strictly Fëanorian, for example, or just Maeglin, you cover a range, so I'm curious about this one.

Silmalope: I have a very short attention span – if I try to draw the same character twice in a row, I end up going, “I can’t do this! I want to draw someone else!” But because I love all the characters, there are plenty to choose from.

As for what draws me to Tolkien … when I was a kid, I really liked The Hobbit. I liked the scale of the world. It felt so exciting and wild and magical – like if you went in any direction, you would find something exciting right off the map. And now having read the larger legendarium, I know how true that is.

As an adult, I also really like the way Tolkien writes morality. His characters are never fully good or evil; they all come with inner conflict, and they’re all faced with difficult decisions. Especially in The Silmarillion, many characters don't have a right option to choose from. They’re torn between many evils, and picking one just brings more terrible consequences down on everybody else. But despite that inherent tragedy, there’s an undercurrent of hope. There’s a sense that it's worth it to keep trying and suffering and failing, because someday, in the end, someone will succeed.

Dawn: Why did you choose Shadow's presentation to create for?

Silmalope: I was delighted when I saw that Shadow was doing a presentation on aromantic interpretations of characters! I had read Shadow's interview and was excited for it even before I realized that there was still a need for art for that presentation. So when I saw the call for more artists, I was like “Yes! This is my chance!”

I identify as ace-aro and it's been many years since I've worked all that out. But when I was growing up, I didn't always have that clarity, and I found a lot of solace in Tolkien's narratives. Obviously, his writing does include romance – mythic romances like Beren and Lúthien and also everyday love, like Sam and Rosie Cotton – but it also includes a wide range of love that is not inherently romantic: Theoden's love for his people, Frodo's pity for Gollum, or the companionship of characters like Fingon and Maedhros. In exploring such a wide spectrum of emotion, Tolkien’s world is sometimes unintentionally more welcoming to aromantic characters than those of many modern writers.

Bilbo is a great example, and I was really excited to see Shadow will be covering him, because he’s always been a favorite aromantic headcanon of mine. Even though he’s never in a romantic relationship, he never seems to want it and never seems to miss it. He has meaningful relationships with his friends, family and neighbors; the respect of the Elves and Dwarves, even petty rivalries with the Sackville-Bagginses – and in the end, he’s held in such high esteem that he sails to Valinor. It’s in such contrast to the way many aromantic characters are depicted as austere and robotic. Bilbo is anything but. He’s curious, adventurous, stubborn, brave – a bit curmudgeonly! – and his life is full and vibrant.

Dawn: This is a good time to mention one of my favorite things about your work, which is how your art features diverse characters. Making Tolkien fandom and fanworks more inclusive is an important goal of the SWG and, by extension, Mereth Aderthad as well. Do you want to speak to what inspires you in this area or what you see or why you see diverse representations in fan art as important?

Silmalope: I know firsthand how impactful it is to see yourself in a story and feel recognized. But there's another aspect of representation which is, of course, that fiction and art are great ways to empathize with and relate to characters whose lives are different from ours, in a way that we don’t necessarily have the opportunity to do in the ordinary scope of our day-to-day.

A stellar example of that, and one of the biggest inspirations for my art, is the manga series Witch Hat Atelier by Kamome Shirahama. It’s a coming-of-age fantasy story that grapples with issues of morality and the challenges of being a creative person, especially when you're just starting out. But another thing that stands out about it is the character designs, which are so, so, so wonderfully beautiful and diverse. Kamome Shirahama really explores the ways that humans are beautiful regardless of age, skin color, gender expression, physical ability, body type. Her work helped me really embrace the idea that drawing diverse characters is not just something you should do because it's the right thing to do. It also has inherent artistic value.

As an artist, when you depict characters who are diverse you are literally expanding your palette. You can choose from more skin tones; you can choose from more facial structures, more hair textures, more body types, and that gives you more ways to communicate visually – which, as we talked about earlier, is really iimportant when you’re drawing for The Silmarillion and there are several dozen dark-haired, gray-eyed characters that you need to tell apart.

Another huge source of inspiration is The Silmarillion fandom itself, which is jam-packed with wonderful, diverse creators sharing diverse artwork. Headcanons that are now widely accepted headcanons, like Black Fingon or Disabled Idril, didn’t come about by chance. They were created by individual artists and writers embracing a non-mainstream headcanon and sharing it with the world, and then other creators who expanded on that and added to it. And that process is still ongoing now.

Dawn: In a few places on your tumblr, you mentioned that you do not see yourself as an artist, which is honestly mind-blowing to me as somebody who's really truly not much of an artist. My first instinct is to push back with something like, "Your work is stunning! You clearly are an artist!"

But I actually think this is an important part of fandom. After all, I'm not an academic, but do scholarly work and have nudged a few fans to try it too. And I think there's value in people like us making these previously elite occupations with their elite titles something that anyone can do. What advice would you offer to other fans who also don't see themselves as artists but would like to get started with art about Tolkien's work or Tolkien's world? What would their first steps look like?

Silmalope: You've hit the nail on the head. “Artist” is a word I try to avoid when I can, because I don't feel that I have the confidence to back that up. Putting your work on the internet is way, way scarier than just drawing for yourself – so out of self-preservation, you want to say, "Don't get your expectations too high!"

The advice I would give – which I suppose I should try to take myself – is not to worry about whether you are an artist; just draw what you want to draw. Don't worry about whether you are a writer; just write what you want to write. You don't need anyone's permission or approval to be creative. That's just something we can all do as humans, and that's wonderful.

It is very likely that you are your own worst critic; fandom is by and large an incredibly receptive audience. You're never going to post a picture of Galadriel and hear someone say, “Why did you draw Galadriel?" No. They'll say, "I love Galadriel. I'm so excited to see art of her!" The other thing about fandom spaces is that you’re surrounded by fellow creators who know that it's hard when you're just starting to create something. They know that it takes a lot of effort, and it's often really frustrating when the thing you put on the page doesn't match the vision in your head. But they also know how much love goes into it, so they’re more willing to cheer you on and share inspiration and advice.

As far as practical steps, I’d say: “Get a paper and pencil and draw!” There's nothing stopping you. Draw whatever makes you happy – your favorite character, your favorite scene, the headcanon that you stay up at night thinking about. There are a lot of free online resources for beginners if you want to learn about posing or anatomy, but those aren’t prerequisites for drawing – they’re things you can learn as you go. If you’re looking for an approachable starting point, the Tolkien fandom always has events running that are welcoming to artists of all experience levels. Other than that: Take breaks, flip your canvas, drink some water, and have fun!