I wonder if the promoters got permission from the Tolkien Estate for this?
Tag: Art and artists
Beren and Luthien, Egyptian Style
One of the First Age tales in The Silmarillion is how Luthien, an elf, falls in love with Beren, who is human, and aids him in his quest to recover the three Silmaril jewels from Morgoth. This part of The Sil has a more fairy tale flavor than the rest of the book, involving overt …
The Russian Hobbit, Part 6
I thought I was finished with this series, but there’s just too much good material, and a few book covers I overlooked. So let’s proceed. First of all, it occurred to me I never included pictures of non-Russian hobbits to serve as comparisons. So here’s the first ever, drawn by Tolkien. And isn’t it amazing …
Valinor
Valinor was where the gods, or Valar, of Middle-Earth dwelt; it lay far over the western sea. In the age of The Silmarillion, there were comings and goings to it all the time (by the standards of elves that is) but by the LOTR, it was only a legend to mortals. This illustration by Michael …
Tolkien Humor
The Tolkien revival has grown up with the internet. When the Jackson trilogy began in 2001, memes, forums, message boards, and myspace were new and fresh, enabling fans to find each other and begin to create… humor, that is. The following is a sampling from those 25 years. You’d need to be born before 1980 …
Maurice Sendak’s Hobbit
Whenever I do a deep dive on a subject I always discover things I never knew before. Like this ink drawing of Bilbo and Gandalf that children’s book author Maurice Sendak did! The year was 1967 and it was made during a period Sendak was illustrating others’ work but not writing his own. One could …
The Russian Hobbit, Part 5
In coming to the end of this series, I’ll look at editions of The Hobbit that were published in former Eastern Bloc countries. In Part 2 of this series I speculated that the Russian translation may have used for an early Polish edition instead of Tolkien’s original English language one, hence the all-over hairy feet. …
The Russian Hobbit, Part 4
In this post I’ll be looking at some Russian / Slavic hobbit illustrations I found that were not published, at least not in a book, as far as I know. This sweet pic depicts, I think, Gandalf and Bilbo after their adventure sharing a quiet moment together, or perhaps some ho-yay?** Gandalf is not wearing …
The Russian Hobbit, Part 3
Yet more strange creatures sprung from the minds of Russian artists with views of hobbits unadulterated by the West. Take the one above. The hobbit is hard to see, but he’s at midcenter left, holding a sword, apparently miniaturized as he fights the spiders, who should be giant spiders. (The same scene is depicted ina …
The Russian Hobbit, Part 2
After The Hobbit was published in the Soviet Union in 1976 the same translation was used for subsequent editions. The artists again featured those same furry feet and legs for Bilbo Baggins. Like the creature above who looks far from human-like with his claws, donkey ears, and misshapen face. Well, it’s an honest attempt at …