Follow you heart, or use your mind? To balance both requires daring and delicacy.
Tag Archive: Art and artists
Apr 09
Something’s Fishy
Pun, trifle,Lovecraftian horror, or fine art? You decide. (The Water, 1563-64, by Giuseppe Arcimbaldo)
Mar 30
Sauron, Melkor, and the Ho-yay
Melkor and Sauron by Kaprriss on @DeviantArt Tolkien March is drawing to a close. As it ends, I want to touch on the fanfic and fanart… and the slash… bursting onto the scene after the release of Peter Jackson’s Fellowship of the Ring in 2001, and gathering steam through the next two releases and …
Mar 25
The Worm Ouroboros [Reading Challenge 2018]
The Worm Ouroboros by E. R. Eddison Ballantine Books, New York, 1967 [Challenge # 48: A high fantasy] The Worm Ouroboros is one of the great granddaddies of fantasy, sandwiched between Lord Dunsany, who was an influence, and J.R.R. Tolkien, who received its influence. As such, it’s a kind of a bridge, but one …
Mar 20
In Praise of Oliphaunts
Grey as a mouse, Big as a house, Nose like a snake, I make the earth shake, As I tramp through the grass; Trees crack as I pass. J.R.R. Tolkien, “Oliphaunt” (Artwork: Oliphaunt am I, by wynahiros) Oliphaunts, or mumakil as Tolkien also called them, are one of the mythical creatures most …
Mar 19
Three Editions Through Time
Three editions of the trilogy over the years. The top one is the first, unauthorized paperback version. Note that the Nazgul on the cover of The Two Towers is a pegasus and not the reptilian creature that was actually in the book. The artist got other details right, like the black-robed, faceless Nazgul, and …
Mar 16
Plagiarism, Hobbit Style
Looking through my Pinterest feed for Tolkien images, I found this cover for a French edition of The Hobbit. It looked awfully familiar to me. Then I figured out where I had seen it before. Now, I wish the artist had been just a little more creative and not cribbed what is obvious, particularly as …
Mar 12
The Fellowship of the Ring Chinese Cover
Cover for Chinese edition of The Fellowship of the Ring, 2014, by artist Jian Guo This beautiful cover, reminiscent of Chinese jade carvings, was part of a competition by WenJing Publishing to release the trilogy for an Asian market. I like it when the books receive artistic interpretations of the country they are released …
Mar 10
Smaug the Terrible
There he lay, a vast red-golden dragon, fast asleep; a thrumming came from his jaws and nostrils, and wisps of smoke, but his fires were low in slumber. Beneath him, under all his limbs and his huge coiled tail, and about him on all sides stretching away across the unseen floors, lay countless piles …
Mar 05
Der Kleine Hobbit
German edition This German cover of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit changes the title slightly to “The Little Hobbit” and pairs a bloated, toadlike, crazy-eyed Smaug with a tap-dancing Hobbit waving a top hat. The whole is enclosed in a trompe l’oeil frame with a spider crawling on the bottom, which alludes to the dwarves’ …
