Portrait of an author: JRR Tolkien

Created as part of a new series exploring the UK's favourite authors, I started with JRR Tolkien after learning more about him through my research on the Oxford map. I'm exploring Instagram more and choosing a consistent theme and colour palette that will be a bit different from the larger projects in my portfolio and blog.

When Tolkien was 16, his guardian forbade him from talking to his girlfriend and trouble-maker Edith Bratt, until he was 21. She thought he had forgotten her and accepted a proposal from another man. On the evening of his 21st birthday, he wrote her a very romantic letter, and she swiftly broke off her engagement, even though Tolkien didn’t have money or prospects at the time. Despite war, Edith and ‘Ronald’ lived many happy years together, eventually retiring to Bournemouth.

Plus, I had a go at creating a gif!

See the time-lapse of the creation here

If you're interested, here's my colour palette for Instagram. There's a lot of colours, but I wanted to keep some creative freedom and not have it too same-y. It's more important to me that when you look at my grid as a whole, the same reds are used each time, for example, than to have every image in the same three or four colours. Although they look like fairly standard paintbox colours, it's taken a lot of trial and error to design a palette I'm happy with.