I spent a free weekend watching LotR and found myself thinking of drawing a quick sketch... a portrait maybe. I was tempted to draw Aragorn again but decided to try something else and hopefully learn something along the way. I stumbled across a nice image of Elrond and thought why not... for quite a short moment. Then I got bored and don't think I ever quite got him right and abandoned the sketch for a couple of hours. Then I came back and stared at it thinking he looks mad... and at that point the abandoned sketch started to live its own life...
Just because I didn't like the sketch too much I gave up and drew Aragorn anyway (didn't even bother to get a new paper) and suddenly this became a portrait of him in the end anyway. _{(If it were a portrait of Elrond, I'd probably have titled it "So be it." )}

Then I needed to just add Arwen there and now no one hopefully pays any attention to the disturbing father anymore. I don't think I've ever tried this before: draw interesting enough background for the centre of attention and you can make him fade. Wishful thinking?

Although none of them look like they should, I like to believe you can recognise them. I didn't spend more than a couple of hours on this which is very quick for me considering there are three people there. Or wait, two of them are elves, that's even more difficult. I had nice photos to draw Elrond and Arwen from, and a hopeless random little blur ref for Aragorn but I didn't bother spending hours searching for a suitable picture with precisely the expression I wanted, so a lot of improvisation there.

Damn, it's quick, messy and far from flawless but I like it.
I love it how a pointless practice sketch escapes from your control and grows into a story.