Your favourite Tolkien artistes

[narya]

I swoon over Donato:

[superwizard]

Very nice picturenarya!!.

[MaidenOfTheShieldarm]

Old Tom, thanks for the book reccomendation. It looks wonderful. I'll have to check it out next time I'm at the book store.

Then I discovered Anke Eissmann. Whose exquisite watercolour paintings I adore. Here is an artist who truly portrays the spirit of Tolkien.

Agreed. She captures the feel so very well. My only critique, in general, is th at her people all look very similar -- very angular faces, strong jaw, etc. I really love her painting of Lúthien. It's so . . . right, you know?

Roger Garland is a good artist, but I don't like his take on Tolkien at all.

His paintings are really beautiful, but they don't seem like paintings of Middle Earth. They seem like some other fantasy world. The colours he uses, however, especially in The Two Trees are so beautiful and vibrant and layered.

Almost every Tolkien artist that I've seen gets something right.

So true! Too bad we can't combine the good elements from all of them to make one giant super artist. (Although that would be an interesting conglomeration of styles.)

[Alatar]

Roger Garland is a good artist, but I don't like his take on Tolkien at all.

His paintings are really beautiful, but they don't seem like paintings of Middle Earth. They seem like some other fantasy world. The colours he uses, however, especially in The Two Trees are so beautiful and vibrant and layered.

Funnily enough his artwork seems right for the more fantastical, particularly his illustrations for the HoME Paperbacks. His Fall of Gondolin, with metal dragons is excellent, as is his pic of the doors of night.

[superwizard]

The doors of night really is quite beautiful.[/i]

[yovargas]

Just saw this:


Creepy. I like it.

[Primula Baggins]

What is it, yov? And who's it by?

[yovargas]

"5 ringwraits at Amon Sûl"

The site I found it at doesn't credit the artist.

[superwizard]

nice

[Pearly Di]

That's a fabulous picture of the Nazgûl!

Although the pedant in me must point out that it was October and it wasn't SNOWING on Amon Sûl.

But it is a really great portrayal of them. Damn scary. *brrrrrr!* *shivers* They really gave me the creeps in the book ...

[Primula Baggins]

The snow is why I didn't recognize it as Amon Sûl. I must have some pedant in me, too.

Really excellently creepy. It's too bad there's no artist credit—I'd love to see what else he/she has done.

[Rowanberry]

Yov (and others), the Ringwraiths painting is made by Lode Claes (I don't know if this artist is a Belgian right-wing politician, or just a namesake). The picture was published in the book Realms of Tolkien: Images of Middle-earth. On this page, you can also find a revised version of that picture (scroll down a bit).

[Primula Baggins]

Oh, my goodness! That revised version is worth seeing.

No snow, less light, and it's even creepier.

Thanks, Rowan!

[superwizard]

Very nice

[Parmamaite]

I was just skimming through my illustrated The Hobbit today, and I realized how much those illustrations (by Michael Hague) has influenced my mental pictures. I really like his pictures, and they're faithful to the text.

There's two of his pics here: http://website.lineone.net/~istari/gal-hague.htm

[MaidenOfTheShieldarm]

Yov, nice find! That's a beautiful painting, as is the one Rowan found.

I tried to find more of his work as I really like his style, but only found these two.

Parma, what beautiful paintings! The colours Hague uses are so brilliant. Those two you linked to reminded me of a tapestry for some reason.

[MithLuin]

Parma, I like his work, too .

That page Rowanberry linked reminded me of another painting I quite like (but again, a one-shot):

Gaffer Gamgee and the Black Rider

He has a few other LotR paintings, but the others don't do much for me. This one is just very good .

I also like this Éowyn by Sharon Tanhueco.

And this image by Michael Kaluta is one of the better Éowyn battles the Witch King.

[Alatar]

What does it say about me that my first reaction to "Gaffer Gamgee and the Black Rider" was to think "Hobbits can't grow beards..."

[Parmamaite]

When visiting my parents this weekend, I looked at an illustrated Faerie book that I remember fondly from my teenage years. Great was my surprise when I saw that it was made by Brian Froud and Alan Lee
I was all the more surprised, because I'm not a big fan of his Tolkien illustrations. I'm not sure why, maybe they're just too perfect.

Too bad it didn't say anywhere who had done the individual illustrations in the book. Some of the colour-pictures looked to me as vaguely in Lee's style, but one those was the single signed pic in the book, and that was Froud's.

[Old_Tom_Bombadil]

Some of you may be familiar with the work of illustrator Pauline Baynes. When I was a teenager back in the ‘70s I owned a poster of wonderful map that she had illustrated.

I have a paperback copy of The Tolkien Reader which includes her illustrations for Farmer Giles of Ham and a group of poems published collectively as The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. This is actually the name of the first poem in the set. Below is an excerpt of an illustration for the second poem of the set, "Tom Bombadil Goes Boating". It depicts Bombadil dancing with one of Farmer Maggot's daughters:



The front and back cover of the dust jacket for Adventures, published in 1962, bore her illustrations. The back cover featured a napping Bombadil:




Ms. Baynes also illustrated the poem “Bilbo’s Last Song”. I am happy to own this poem published in a slender book with Baynes' color illustrations.


In 1990 Adventures was re-released with illustrations by Roger Garland. As of this afternoon it is my great pleasure to own a copy of this out-of-print text. You may be familiar with the cover. Here's an excerpt:



The illustrations inside are small vignettes, very much like those executed by Ms. Baynes. I had never seen any of them before, and am pleased to say that they are quite good.

I discovered that Garland has an online gallery--Lakeside Gallery--where one may purchase prints of his works.