Our Art Section Is Now Open!

We are so excited to announce that Silmarillion-based artwork and other visual fanworks can now be posted on the SWG! If you are an artist, we welcome you to archive your Silmarillion art with us. The SWG enjoys almost seventeen years of history as a supportive and welcoming space for writers of Tolkien-based fanfiction, and we look forward in the year to come to welcoming more creators of all types of fanwork into our community.

Getting Started

If you want to share a piece of artwork, use the artwork submission form to upload your work to the site. You can find links to this form on the My Account -> Add New Fanwork menu or on your My Fanworks page. If you want to walk through the form step-by-step, check out our artwork FAQ here.

Artwork on our archive can include multiple images, similar to chapters in stories. You will be able to tag your art and add notes, just like you can with other types of fanwork. You also have the option of adding a custom thumbnail, and if you'd like constructive criticism, you can request feedback specific to art. And of course SWG members can leave you comments, just like they already do on stories and other fanwork types we accept!

Remember that we also welcome creators to archive their older fanworks with us. You will have the option to backdate your work, and if you don't want it to appear on lists of recent fanworks, you can opt out of these as well.

What Is Eligible?

We have always tried to keep our site as open to as many fanworks as possible while remaining a Silmarillion-specific site--part of why we have added artwork to the archive is to meet this goal! Artists should be aware of two requirements for sharing art on our site.

First, work shared on our site must have a significant basis in The Silmarillion or related works, like the History of Middle-earth series. We are liberal in our understanding of what that means: any time period not covered in detail in The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings is included, as are multi-age fanworks and crossovers with a significant Silmarillion component. For more information on what we count as Silmarillion-based, check out our "Silmfic" FAQ.

Next, there are some restrictions on content for artwork. Our webhost's Terms of Service does not allow us to use our site to share certain kinds of content. Artwork with graphic depictions of sexual activity, sexualized nudity, or sexual situations involving minors are not allowed on our archive. See our adult content FAQ for more information.

Beyond these two restrictions, all types and genres of art about all characters and relationships are welcome! Artwork is also eligible for our challenges (and we will have a special stamp for the challenge beginning February 15th for any creator who creates artwork as a challenge response).

Finding Artwork on Our Archive

Once artists begin adding work to the site, visitors can find artwork in several ways. First, artwork is included in listings of all fanworks on the site: on our homepage, in the New & Updated Fanworks block on the sidebar, and in the New & Updated Fanworks page. Under the Fanworks menu, you will see that that are also several pages just for art: New & Updated Artwork, an artist directory, and a listing of the artwork types that will link you to artwork of the type you choose. The newest art added to the archive is also shown on the homepage of the site.

The Find a Fanwork page under the Tools menu can help you find any fanwork on our site meeting specific characteristics, including art. Using this tool, you can browse art including or excluding specific characters, pairings, ratings, and warnings, including narrowing down your search to work by a creator or creators. (To include more than one creator in your search, simply separate their names with commas.)

If you enjoy the work of a particular artist, you will find their work collected on their member profile under the Gallery link. Simply click on an artist's name to access their profile and their gallery.

Just like any other fanwork, you can comment on art, and we hope that as artists begin uploading their work, our members take a moment to share their appreciation for artists and artwork that they enjoy.

Also for Artists ...

While we are just opening the art gallery on our archive, we've been working for a while to expand our boundaries to include non-written fanworks. (Astute observers may have noticed, for example, that we've been slowly changing terms on our site like writing and author to fanwork and creator.) On the SWG's Discord, we have a dedicated #art channel for sharing and discussing fanart. We also have an #art-studio channel for artists to create together in real time. SWG members can join our Discord by scrolling to the bottom of this page, where they will find an open invite link in the footer. However, you don't have to be a member of our site to join; simply contact the mods and we'll send you an invite link.

Where to Next?

Even though we are the Silmarillion Writers' Guild, we were not around long before we realized we wanted to keep our group open and friendly to all fanworks' creators working with material from The Silmarillion. It has long been our hope to welcome more than just written fanworks on our archive, and some of our earliest experiments on our original eFiction site were undertaken with this goal in mind. While we were able to add audio and podfic relatively early on, we were less successful with other types of fanworks, including art, though not for lack of trying.

This was part of the motivation in selection a content management system rather than specific fiction archive software for our site rebuild last year. Artwork is the first of several new fanwork types that we will unveil over the next several months. Look out for recommendation lists, playlists, and video fanworks in the months to come, as well as a multimedia option for posting fanworks that include more than one fanwork format.

We are excited to expand what we can offer our members and hope all Silmarillion fanworks creators feel welcome to join us! As always, reach out to moderator team if you have questions or need assistance in getting started with using the site.

Acknowledgements

The SWG moderator team would like to extend our gratitude to our art editor Anérea and beta testers Himring, Gabriel, and Independence1776 for their assistance testing and providing feedback on test versions of the art archive.

Posted on 12 February 2022 (updated 12 March 2022) by Dawn Felagund