Visualizing LotR

I'm almost finished with the Fellowship of the Ring and I realized, the movies (while I enjoy them) don't really do the best job at painting the imagery properly, but the problem is I'm having a hard time picturing what is going on in old school fantasy and lean more towards seeing it with the movies imagery due to seeing the movies first. Are there any good artists to look at to really get a good feel how middle-earth should look?

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tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Thorin
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

Check Tolkien Gateway as opposed to the LOTRwiki. The former has tons of art from all different sources
tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Thorin

Awesome, thank you. That's definitely more of what I was looking for.

Ted Nasmith

Fuck me some of his stuff is awesome

The most influential of the Middle-earth artists (not counting JRRT's own few illustrations) are Nasmith, John Howe and Alan Lee, the latter two of whom directly worked on the movies and the first of whom was a big influence on some scenes despite his lack of involvement. The other big name is the Brothers Hildebrandt, whose Tolkien-themed art I mostly dislike but who were pretty influential in shaping the perception of LotR back in their heyday (the 70s).

I'm just gonna dump some Tolkien art here for the next hour ish because hell, why not. Sorry if I fuck up any attributions.

"The Uruk-Hai", John Howe

ALAN LEE

"Faramir and Eowyn", Mike Kaluta

might be concept art from the movies? no idea

"The Company Approaches Caradhras", John Howe

"The Balrog", Ted Nasmith

"Barad-dur", Roger Garland

"The Black Rider", John Howe

"Gaffer and the Nazgul", Stephen Hickman

"Bridge of Khazad-Dum", Roger Garland

"Fingolfin's Challenge to Morgoth", John Howe

"Cirith Ungol", Greg & Tim Hildebrandt

"Earendil & Elwing", Roger Garland

"Eowyn and the Witch-King of Angmar", Mike Kaluta

"Eowyn", Erin Kelso

"Eowyn Before the Gates of Meduseld", Mike Kaluta

"Shelob About to Leap on Frodo", John Howe

"Gandalf and Bilbo", Tim Kirk

"Fire on Weathertop", Ted Nasmith

"Hobbiton", Roger Garland

"Battle of the Pelennor Fields", John Howe

Can't find this one without the stupid border, alas.

"The Sea", Ted Nasmith

"Gandalf Approaches the Guarded City", Ted Nasmith

"At the Court of the Fountain", Ted Nasmith

"War of the Ring", Judy King Rieniets

"Zirakzigil", John Howe

"The Road to Minas Tirith", Tim Kirk

"The Nazgul", Lode Claes

"At the Foot of Mount Doom", Ted Nasmith

I read LotR last when I was a child, together with my dad

I'm in the mood again, which edition should I buy?
There was something about how you should buy one printed after some date or something, right?

The images are nice thank you for posting them

some Alan Lee art from the one-volume LotR to wrap up, I gotta go to work. these don't have names afaik.

I'd recommend the hardback complete edition with the Alan Lee paintings if you can find it, it's a really nice book. Satisfying to hold. There are also cheaper, less weighty paperback versions with the same illustrations out there. Or the 50th anniversary edition is alright too.

really though just about any version published since 1994 is fine, and since 2004 is pretty much great

Thanks again user, I will look for it

Gollum started off very hard to imagine for me. Over the years he became the most poignant character to me. Now I view the likes of Aragorn as deeply strange, he seems deeply unrealistic with his unfailing personal strength and rightness.

no prob, glad you enjoyed the pics!

T H I N
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Aragorn is indeed a really weird character. I think it gets harder to find him relatable as his character grows to a more superhuman stature throughout the story. When he starts out he is quite likable in that he is somewhat sarcastic, world-wise foil to the naïveté and relative incompetence of the hobbits, and he never totally loses that streak, but by the end he can match wills with an evil god and win, he is more like one of the mythic Fathers of Men of the Silmarillion than anyone you could sit down and smoke a pipe with. I think part of why it feels so strange is that the character's original role as the hobbits' Buddy from Bree on to Rivendell was not originally linked to the idea of the scion of Numenor, that all came later.

Do you want to be fucked by Aragorn, user?

Aragorn is probably a really shitty lay

>spends a week running non stop after Merry & Pippin then fights the battle of the Hornburg
>immediately challenges Sauron with the palantir after that
>doesn't sleep for a week as he rushes through the paths of the dead overmastering the horror of those under his command as he arrives on the Pelennor and rescues everyone
>repeatedly resists monstrous temptations of power
>makes the correct moral and strategical choices at every turn
Was he a Gary-sue?

He's 87 and has never ever had sex

You can also find images and pictures of Germanic mythology. Professor Tolkien's expertise was in that area, and he used or was at least inspired by their ideas and way of looking at the world. Pic related is of the Fenris wolf at Ragnarok, but it could easily be Carcharoch and Beren

what? I thought the movies did an excellent job with bringing to life the world. What exactly were they missing?

>Professor Tolkien

let's not

If you don't mind how pretty everyone is, Jenny Dolfen has some very good works.

It's not so much that they are missing anything as that their interpretation of the text is limited by the artists who mainly inspired their visual approach. To wit, John Howe, Alan Lee, and (in absentia) Ted Nasmith. Not even mentioning the many substantive changes to the plot, they choose to portray scenes and characters in their own way which is fine but can distort our own imaginings about the text.

OP is not criticizing the movies, he is saying he does not like that having seen them they have taken over his imagination and he cannot picture LOTR without the movies imagery. He is robbed of the chance to create his own vision of Middle Earth.

>tfw

Thank god they will never try to animate the Silmarillion. Maedhros, and Feanor, and Turin will always be true to what I knew them to be.

>Thank god they will never try to animate the Silmarillion
They won't animate it. They'll just take bits from it and make a bastardized version of it that barely resembles the source material, and they will probably call it "The Lord of The Rings: The Silmarrilion" and half the main cast will be black.

These sort of things are actual blessings in disguise. In the end I was deeply grateful for how bad the movie Troy was. It didn't affect my perception of The Iliad precisely because of how ludicrous Brad Pitt is as Achilles.

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>main cast will be black.
I can see the problem with the other things, but there's nothing wrong with that...

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Would you kindly explain why do you think it's a bait? Your post looks more trolling than mine.

Because casting a fictional work to fill a quota for IRL political dogma instead of ensuring the best cast to fit the work is obviously (hence the bait) going to produce bad art.

This is not to fill a quota, you fucking moron, it's just to give more representation. I'm not even saying that "half of the main cast" should be black, just one or two character. What exactly would that interfere in the story? It would change literally nothing.

I'm totally against people who tries to shove blackness into every protagonist/antagonist/iconic character. But there's literally nothing wrong in having one or two black characters. It's hard to believe that anyone fighting against that is not a racist.

I like anime

Yep, bait.

Tolkien himself is the only and the best source there is. Subsequent artists are all too grand for their own good. Find the copy of The art of Tolkien somewhere and you're set to go.

Some more shitty scans from the man himself.

It's unfortunate you saw the movies first, but if you have difficulty imagining the descriptive style, how did you make it through over 1000 pages of Tolkien?

>read the hobbit
>introduction or prologue or whatever the fuck clearly states that orcs and goblins are the same shit, and that goblins is the right term
>peter hackson's hobbit has orcs and goblins as separate creatures

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Except it's not...

Hobbit films were huge dissapointment. In place of lighter, more magical story, you get darker and more chaotic piece.

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Also, Wyverin...

The third film was pure trash. Tolkien would definitely puke if he saw that shit in the theater. Man, just remembering about all the shitty "MUH ACTION, MUH FIGHTS" they created out of nowhere to appeal to the teenage/manchild audience is terrible...

Best girl

giv new zeal and citizenship

Indeed she is, my dear user.

That hobbit kinda looks like a dwarf

Must be pure stylistic choice by the artist, since hobbits unequivocally have no beards.

I read them without ilustrations and ejoyed the shit out of it. So i think it doesnt matter, just start from the hobbit.

Melkor when he could tower over everything on the planet

I tend to picture the setting as similar to a John Bauer painting.

Kittelsen as well.

I remember seeing LOTR illustrations by a Russian artist a long time ago, anyone know who this is? This thread reminded me.

There was a Russian edition a number of years ago illustrated by Sergei Yukhimov in a style inspired by medieval art and icon painting. Very striking stuff.

I will post a couple more since have found a good dump of them.

First two should have been pretty obvious, this is Merry & Pippin & Grishnakh I assume