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

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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.

It is the specific craftsmanship and 'Elvish skill' of Tolkien's invention and development of each of these components that gives his secondary-world of Arda a much explored sense of 'depth' and 'verisimilitude' that has given Modern Fantasy an incredible work to explore and re-discover again and again. The unjacketed book features illustrated boards and includes a silk ribbon marker, and is housed in a special transparent slipcase; together with Alan's beautiful paintings, this new presentation of this landmark work provides the reader with the ultimate edition with which to celebrate the 60th anniversary of its first publication. However, on the opposite end of the spectrum, are the many scribbles and hurried drawings often found in the margins of the manuscript.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. The design's clean lines cost Tolkien much effort; he made numerous sketches, each one a simplification of the last, to attain the apparent simplicity of the final design. The epic story of the Lord of the Rings in movie form would have been nothing without careful treatment of the visuals, so I am glad that the incredibly hard work of the many artists who worked on this project is featured to wonderfully in Garyh Russell's books. The pages I enjoyed the most in The Art of The Lord of the Rings were the ones that showed how Tolkien carefully prepared elements that would appear in the book, along with the final pages that show his development of ideas for the dustjackets. 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.

It's mostly full of half-finished scribbles and sketches drawn by Tolkien, a lot of which were more of a look into his thought process as he wrote than actual pieces of artwork he intended for others to see. The Art of The Lord of the Rings is a 2004 book by Gary Russell which includes illustrations and photographs showing the design of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film series. Tolkien did not live to see The Silmarillion published, but he prepared images for it, including paintings of several symmetrical tile-like heraldic emblems for its kings and houses, and an actual Númenórean tile such as would have been rescued from the wreck of the civilisation of Númenor in Elendil's ships, and brought to Middle-earth.The first opportunity to dip into Tolkien’s work professionally came with Castles, in 1984, which was a heavily illustrated account of the role played by these impressive and often magical structures in myth, romance and literature. There are moments that are so gripping that it’s impossible to resist getting close to the characters, such as Frodo and Sam’s first terrifying encounter with Gollum, but more often I’m shadowing the heroes at a distance and getting distracted by the scenery. I didn’t immediately conceive a desire to illustrate the books, though they had a huge influence on the type of drawings I did as a student of illustration and graphic design. His images – a total of seven full-page images and 57 head-pieces – are based on original designs by Queen Margrethe II of Denmark. Clearly, Tolkien's artwork for the Lord of the Rings was never meant to be included in any sort of publication (besides the map), since they aren't more than prepatory sketches.