The Art of the Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

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How, given little over half a century of work, did one man become the creative equivalent of a people? Tolkien's mental pictures often found expression in drawing, from rough sketches made within the manuscript to more finished illustrations. A sumptuous full-colour art book containing the complete collection of almost 200 sketches, drawings, paintings and maps created by J. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in South Africa in 1892 and moved to England with his family while still a child. Even when the final drawing is achieved and is unquestionably fantastic in concept, he did not hesitate to put it aside if it didn’t work with the story he had developed so far.

These served multiple purposes, first as guides to the author, helping to ensure consistency in the narrative, and later to the reader through the often complex routes taken by his characters. Once all this is accomplished I then transfer the finished drawing to illustration board and proceed to paint the final version. Hammond and Christina Scull, two of the worldãs leading Tolkien scholars, have edited the book and provide an expert introduction and comments. The question of which episodes I should choose as subjects, which could have occupied me for a good part of the allotted time, was more easily settled; the color plates were to be printed on separate sheets and bound around alternating signatures of text pages, which meant that the illustrations would fall between every thirty-two pages of text.Nevertheless, while not a quintessential read that adds to his legendarium, this art book does plenty in opening to readers new doors of appreciation of J. This believable and immersive quality is amplified by the way the names, languages and histories of cultures and characters are deftly threaded into the work, and by the way the themes echo half-remembered stories from our own world. I always assumed the two towers being referenced were Orthanc and Barad-Dur, but they are actually Orthanc and Minas Morgul. There is a shifting, unsettled and pro-visional quality in this transparent medium—closer to drawing than painting—which allows the viewer more room to complete the images in their own mind.

Seven years after their first publication, the books were becoming a cultural phenomenon; the combination of playfulness, poetry and romance and an existential struggle to save the world seemed to align with the spirit of the times, while the characters—now recruited into the counter-culture—lived far beyond the confines of the text. The publishers declined to include a reproduction of the artefact in the first edition of The Lord of the Rings. Having previously read Gary Russell's the Art of the Fellowship of the Ring and knowing that there are two companion volumes which focus on the second and third films in the trilogy I expected this fourth art of volume to be a sort of mashup of all three books and to contain much of the same content. I highly recommend this beautifully constructed volume which follows the narrative of The Lord of the Rings and offers the pictures, illustrations, and (most importantly and interestingly for this reviewer) maps that Tolkien sketched out as his 'tale grew in the telling' and exhibits the focus and detail Tolkien put into the geography of his expanding world. His emphasis on light and shadow in particular, whether metaphorical or literal, justifies any artist’s interest.Hammond and Christina Scull Tolkien scholarship has been given three incredible resources that show how important a part the visual played in Tolkien's world-building. He applied this skill in his development of Middle-earth, creating alphabets such as Tengwar for his invented languages, especially Elvish. This one didn't have quite as much charm as the Hobbit art book for me because it had a lot less actual art and a lot more just rough sketches with less of a balance between text and images which made this one more slow to get through.

Myla would love nothing more than to be able to live peacefully in the Shire and go on the occasional adventure with Bilbo. This book is very human and also very interesting at the same time, I learned quite a bit about Tolkien's work process when it comes to illustrations of all kinds and it gives depth to the story itself.

Tolkien’s World: Paintings of Middle-earth contains paintings from many different artists from around the world including: Alan Lee, John Howe, Ted Nasmith, Inger Edelfeldt, Michael Hague and Roger Garland. A dual-edition full-color book for the millions of fans who have taken The Lord of the Rings to heart through the celebrated film trilogy. It has been an immense privilege to have been allowed to illustrate so many of Tolkien’s stories, though I see this as just one very pleasurable aspect of a lifetime’s relationship with this extraordinary author and the worlds that he has created. This new edition includes all 50 of Alan Lee's beautiful watercolour paintings that have been newly scanned by the artist himself, together with his stunning frontispiece painting that appears in full, for the very first time, as a three-page foldout sheet. Ebooks fulfilled through Glose cannot be printed, downloaded as PDF, or read in other digital readers (like Kindle or Nook).

Tolkien worked on making realistic artefacts to accompany his writing; he spent enormous effort on a facsimile Book of Mazarbul to resemble the burnt, torn volume abandoned at the tomb of the Dwarf-leader Balin in the subterranean realm of Moria; in the story, the wizard Gandalf finds the book and struggles to read out a substantial amount of the damaged text. R.Tolkien (1892-1973) was a distinguished academic, though he is best known for writing The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion and The Children of Hurin, plus other stories and essays. Tolkien’s treatment of the eternal struggle between good and evil, from stirring battles (‘as good as anything in Homer’, according to C. R. Tolkien, the reclusive, pipe-smoking Oxford don, was in the vanguard, and so great was his achievement that his name became virtually synonymous with the literature of fantasy. and to prepare for that I finally read The Art of the Lord of the Rings, which goes through the writing process of TLOTR in as much detail as possible and includes all the survived illustrations, maps and runes that Tolkien drew while he was creating the story.He had a concept of the perfect ideal that he wanted to create; but he also felt the limitations of deadlines, money, publisher’s demands, his other jobs and family duties, and his own perceived limitations, particularly in the artwork. The point is, the images of the Hobbit are not fantastic pieces, but Tolkien did actually intend for them to accompany his works. That means that the content of this volume is much more preliminary, not leading to the kind of classic Hobbit illustrations we see so often reprinted.