Art & Artists Inspired by J.R.R.Tolkien

[Parmastahir]

You are the luckiest boy on the face of the earth!

OK, luck has little to do with. A good deal of work to achieve what you have done over the years (this interview included) would seem to be a necessary ingredient in your success. However, you do make it all seem easy. Congratulations and well done!

Best as always.

Away from The Green Hill Country,

Parmastahir

[Iolanthe]

I hope I have succeeded in asking some interesting questions, and covering both inspirational sources, his working process, the movies, use of Photoshop, collecting, ...

You certainly did! I learnt so many new things from it. Very well done .

[Parmastahir]

Updated the Calendar of the Month feature for April at:

www.angelfire.com/tn3/tolkiencalendars

Hope you like this one!

Away from The Green Hill Country,

Parmastahir

[Iolanthe]

The detachable postcards is a neat idea . I have a love/hate relationship with the Hildebrandts. Some I really enjoy and others I can hardly bear to look at .

Marbretherese and I are going to the ADC Books Castles in the Mist Exhibition on Monday. Here's the gen on Beren's site:

Tolkien Library: Castles in the Mist

Well done, Beren, you have more info there than you get off the ADC Books site .

It looks to be really great fun so we'll take our cameras and notebooks and give you all a full report.

[Parmastahir]

Added a 1996 Ediciones Minotauro to the catalog at:

http://www.angelfire.com/tn3/tolkiencalendars

You can find it in the 1996 - 1998 and Spain listings.

Happy Spring to all!

Away from The Green Hill Country,

Parmastahir

p.s. - And if anyone out there can help me collect any of the Spanish Ediciones Minotauro calendars, I would be grateful for the help. Thanks!

[Parmastahir]

Updated the Calendar of the Month feature for May at:

www.angelfire.com/tn3/tolkiencalendars

It's one that I only recently "discovered".

Away from The Green Hill Country,

Parmastahir

[Iolanthe]

I have to say that that is the strangest mix of illustrations I've ever seen . A lot of them are very 'dark', the dwarves (are they dwarves?) are straight out of a fairytale and April made my eyes pop .

[Merry]

TOR.n is reporting that Pauline Baynes recently passed away at the age of 86.

[Riv Res]

Oh! That is sad news. Her Tolkien work is truly remarkable!

You know...since all of us found each other when PJ's initial trilogy came out we have lost Humphrey Carpenter, Karen Wynn Fonnstad, and now Pauline Baynes. Christopher Tolkien himself is getting up there. Let us hope that the torch is being passed to researchers, writers, and artists alike so that the Tolkien scholastics continue at the extraordinarily high levels they began at.

[Iolanthe]

Indeed!

I've been meaning to do a piece on Baynes and shine a little spotlight on her wonderful work. I must go through my books and start it.

[Philipa]

I'd like that Merry. I've not read his work nor heard of him.

[Merry]

I've read that Tolkien was really fond of her illustrations, and she also did the illustrations for the first Narnia books. I think it would be interesting if you'd speculate, Iolanthe, about why Tolkien liked her work so much, because it kind of surprises me that he did.

[Iolanthe]

I think her work with its mediaeval style was perfect for Farmer Giles and Smith of WM. The slight feyness of it also perfectly illustrates The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, so no surprises there that he liked it in the context of the books she illustrated for him - but I don't think she would have ever been right for LotR or The Hobbit. We know Tolkien wanted her to illustrate LotR, but that there wasn't the budget for it. I also find that surprising, Merry. She illustrated the cover of the '70s single edition paperback of LotR and although I love it because I grew up with it it's somehow not 'right', it has a whimsical edge. She also did a few more LotR and Hobbit related commissions for Allen and Unwin including the Middle-earth map.

Personally I could never have seen her as an illustrator for the whole of LotR unless her style completely changed into something darker and edgier - and then she wouldn't be Baynes. What works for the gentler, young-child friendly Chronicles of Narnia would never work for LotR. I'm not sure it would even have been right for The Hobbit .

Maybe Tolkien was too charmed by her work and attached to it to see it - after all she hadn't let him down up to that point, producing work that he felt matched his vision.

A set of Bayes LotR drawings would have been very, very interesting to see. Would she have changed to suit the darker tone of the book? Would Tolkien, ultimately, have been happy with them?

[marbretherese]

I also find that surprising, Merry. She illustrated the cover of the '70s single edition paperback of LotR and although I love it because I grew up with it it's somehow not 'right', it has a whimsical edge.

My thoughts exactly. I have this paperback edition and the cover is so familiar to me it is almost iconic, but I don't think her overall style would have suited LOTR at all!!

[Iolanthe]

I suspect that if she had illustrated it, Tolkien would have felt the same after seeing them. She is very much a children's illustrator in her style and although Tolkien set out to write LotR as a children's book there must have come a point when he knew that although older children would love it, LotR had become so much more. I think Baynes's illustrations would have jarred him after that point and the fact that he saw her as the potential illustrator makes me wonder at what stage he realised that this was an adult book.

This really is very interesing. I've got to think about this a lot more .