Thorin and Co. 1

One of a series of (alternate) concept sketches me and a friend [link] are doing of the thirteen dwarves from The Hobbit.
While I liked some things about the dwarves in the movie, I think Peter Jackson and Co. went a little too far in trying to establish them all as individuals and as a result alot of them had really wacky character designs to make them easier to distinguish. I would have been content with an approach closer to the book, where among the company you've got a few standouts like Thorin, Balin, Fili/Kili, and Bombur (a case could be be made for Dori as well I suppose) but most are just in the background, providing not so much rounded characters as a gallery of great dwarven faces.
These two were both conceived as "b-side" dwarves, but the one on the left ended up as bombur, who I never pictured as being ridiculously, nutty professor-fat, just a good-hearted dwarvish gentleman, a bit on the corpulant side. the one on the right really could be almost any one of the company, so any identity I assign to him is pretty arbitrary, but for my own part I like to think of him as Nori, one of the least-mentioned dwarves in the book, and definitely one for the background. (truth be told I had movie-Nori partially on the brain while drawing this one; aside from the starfish hair, he was for my money one of the better designed movie dwarves)

I always pictured the company of dwarves, except for Fili and Kili, as mostly consisting of old-timers, long bearded old men whose hearts burn with personal memories of the kingdom under the mountain. I absolutely love the image of them all gathered together in bilbo's parlor, wreathed in curling pipe smoke, their deep set eyes flickering with firelight, all heavy-bearded, looking to Bilbo's eyes very much like eachother, and so foreign and unknown to poor mr. Baggings.