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Daughter of Nienna
Grey Havens
Apr 25 2007, 7:47am
Post #1 of 8
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Tolkien Art: John Howe #4 – Gollum, & Nazgűl & Orcs…oh my!
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Most of these images are published images for calendars and various Middle-earth related books. I posted larger images of the more polished ones. Most of teh thumbnails are also puablished images...only 2 or 3 in this presentation are cards or game images.
Black Riders in the Shire
79.0 x 59.0 cm. — 1999
The 200l Tolkien Calendar
Harper Collins Publishers
More New Zealand landscape - minus the hobbit dwellings in this case.
Black Riders, 2001
Lord of the Rings Boardgame, The Sauron Expansion, Sophisticated Games
Dimensions: 90.5 x 60.5 cm
Naturally, the box is square, but cooping up all the momentum in a square seemed impossible. I end up more and more often treating illustrations in the format they deserve, irregardless of the printed format. A little calculation makes sure that the illustrations do indeed fit what they were designed for, and I'm convinced the extra bits that never get printed add a lot to the rest, even when cropped. And yes, I did make sure the requisite number of equine legs are there!
Horseman in the Night
2001 Tolkien Calendar
HarperCollinsPublishers — 2000
When the editor mentioned that he intended to include the illustration I had done ages ago for a card for Iron Crown Enterprises in the 2001 calendar, I immediately proposed to do a new version. Same bridge, same horseman on the right...
The Lieutenant of the Black Gate — 1980
Originally done as a school project, I actually cut the figure out and glued it onto the background. I find it hard to believe that the whole thing is still intact. It is actually my first piece of Tolkien-related work to be published, appearing in the 1987 Tolkien Calendar with a somewhat startling green background and on the video game from those crooks at Melbourne House, where my weird two-headed crucified crow (what kind of creepy student was I? Small wonder I spent the third year in the stairwell...) was rendered in a rather smarter fashion.
The Dark Tower
47.3 x 47.3 cm, 1990
The 1991 Tolkien Calendar
(page has links to all the various forms of publication…click image)
Originally done for the calendar, this painting was reprinted on The Two Towers (September 1991), both hard and paperback. The calendars in the early '90's were quite a big format, spiral-bound, and more or less square. A frame with two facing vignettes of Sauron's army filled in the edges to accomodate the dates along the bottom.
I can't honestly remember the starting point, but I had (and still do) a collection of photos of the skulls of small animals - mice, rats, small birds - that an art school classmate and I had piled up and photographed. (Don't ask me to justify piling up and taking pictures of skulls, it's one of those things thats comes naturally to art students.) From these snapshots, I had done a painting of the Nameless Isle, from the Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, by H. P. Lovecraft. (Don't ask me why I did that either...) Like many things, some paintings are a dry run, and I knew I had the foundations of Sauron's tower Barad-dur. Naturally, it was much easier to draw the bottom of the tower and leave the top to the imagination, and in truth it took Peter Jackson to finally push me to consider the summit. As for the Ringwraith and his fell steed, they came more or less with the landscape.
Médiaitions sur la Terre du Milieu
Editions Bragelonne — 2003
Witch-King
December 2003, Work-in-progress
In Mordor
1989
The 1991 Tolkien Calendar
Approximately 45.0 x 64.0 cm
I've always found the hobbits' gruelling odyssey in Mordor to be a distressing and powerful episode. The whip, the dust stirred up by orcish feet, even the harsh mountains in the background are all intended to emphasize the hobbits' plight.
Servants of Sauron
Vignette for The Map of Tolkien's Middle-Earth, Brian SIBLEY
HarperCollinsPublishers – Sept. 1994
The Uruk-hai — 1985
Painting done for the 1987 Tolkien Calendar, this is one of the three pictures that was stolen and never recovered in France back in 1997.
Ugluk
Meditations on Middle-Earth, edited by Karen Haber
Saint Martin's Press, New York
November 2001
Gollum Flees the Elves of Mirkwood
The 2001 Tolkien Calendar
This is another New Zealand landscape, a direct product of the stay own under.
Initially, I thought this will be great, a landscape, not too many characters (well, one, basically), it'll be easy to do. A walk in the park, so to speak. Boy was I wrong. After the umpteenth wee rock with reflections and you name it, I thought I'd never see the end of it. Perhaps that's why the border is so... unfocused.
Gollum
Meditations on Middle-Earth, edited by Karen Haber
Saint Martin's Press, New York
November 2001
Gollum
Card illustration for the War of the Ring Boardgame Expansion:
Battles of the Third Age.
Gollum
13.9 x 7.0 cm
Lord of the Rings Boardgame
Sophisticated Games
….
Art Gallery Revised, Aloha & Mahalo, Websites Directory
Nienna: “ those who hearken to her learn pity, and endurance in hope . . . All those who wait in Mandos cry to her, for she brings strength to the spirit and turns sorrow to wisdom." — Valaquenta
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drogo
Lorien
Apr 25 2007, 10:31am
Post #2 of 8
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Howe does a good job with dark creatures and places
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I know some don't care for the dark, spiky monsters and critters in Howe's work, but he does a good job of rendering that aspect of Tolkien's universe. Interesting that he mentions Lovecraft below, because I've thought Howe would be a perfect illustrator for his work (Howe would do a mean Cthulhu).
I also enjoy his misty, watery scenes too (I'll try to post his drowning of Numenor later this week). The Barad-dur painting is nicely atmospheric, and that Gollum fleeing image is very interesting, almost Alan Lee-like in the way it depicts a hazy landscape.
Discuss the Bakshi Lord of the Rings on the Movie Board starting April 16
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Daughter of Nienna
Grey Havens
Apr 25 2007, 4:54pm
Post #3 of 8
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I agree about the Gollum Fleeing image...it is a lot like Alan Lee's "Mist on the Road to Isengard":
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Art Gallery Revised, Aloha & Mahalo, Websites Directory
Nienna: “ those who hearken to her learn pity, and endurance in hope . . . All those who wait in Mandos cry to her, for she brings strength to the spirit and turns sorrow to wisdom." — Valaquenta
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Erufaildon
Bree
Apr 25 2007, 7:06pm
Post #4 of 8
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man do I love the painting of Barad-Dur
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on of mr. Howe's best pictures IMO.
I never thought I'd die alone
I laughed the loudest who'd have known
I traced the cord back to the wall
No wonder it was never plugged in at all
I took my time, I hurried up
The choice was mine, I didn't think enough
I'm too depressed, to go on
You'll be sorry when I'm gone
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Beren IV
Gondor
Apr 26 2007, 12:02am
Post #5 of 8
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Howe is more fantasy-ish, I think,
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than a lot of Tolkien artists. The rocks in Mordor, and the architecture of Barad-dur, has an otherworldly feel to it than Nasmith or Lee. It evokes the exoticness of Middle Earth, and the alien appearance helps the evil atmosphere. I like his artwork quite a lot, actually, although sometimes I like the Nasmith or Lee's naturalistic artwork a little more. My favorite picture of Orodruin, for example, is this one by Ted Nasmith:
I like this picture better than any of the others because it is naturalistic: that ash cloud really does look like the the pyroclastic ash clouds produced by volcanoes. Compare Pinatubo, June 12, 1991:
And Mt. Saint Helens in 1980:
I also like that picture probably most of all in all of the LotR artwork - because it is naturalistic, and that, the most dangerous place anywhere in Arda, is where Frodo and Sam are going!
Howe's artwork, by contrast, is more fantasy-ish, makes the orcs a whole lot more evil-looking while at the same time giving them real body proporitons. I have to admit to liking a collection of different artists for this reason!
Once a paleontologist, now a botanist, will be a paleobotanist
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Daughter of Nienna
Grey Havens
Apr 26 2007, 5:34am
Post #7 of 8
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Thanks for those awesome photos
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This 'fantasy-ish' aspect to some of his work is what I like about Howe as well. Some of his images Evoke the imagination is a different way.
I agree that I like different types of art of different artists. I love the realistic thing that Lee has and I love the fantasy thing of Howe, and the quietly emotive moment of Eissman.
Just imagine if all Tolkien art was on way or another...all realistic or all fantasy-like. it would get monotonous. Sometimes I think perhaps the really wonderful images are the one that have both the realistic and the fantastic lyrically blended together.
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Art Gallery Revised, Aloha & Mahalo, Websites Directory
Nienna: “ those who hearken to her learn pity, and endurance in hope . . . All those who wait in Mandos cry to her, for she brings strength to the spirit and turns sorrow to wisdom." — Valaquenta
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