Worst of Tolkien Art

[Estelyn Telcontar]

A link on the German Tolkien Society's forum lead me to a list of horrible paintings of Tolkien subjects. View and despair! :eek:

"The horror" by aervir (http://aervir.livejournal.com/9990.html?view=33286#t33286)

The exotic dancing Lúthien has to be the most ridiculous image I've seen so far.

Perhaps some of you have seen more awful pictures to add to the list?

[Lalwendë]

Haha! Excellent!

They have a traditional slideshow at Oxonmoot of art and illustration and it's very rude about some of the art, though they tend to pick on Alan Lee which aint fair - they never pick on Nasmith, who is always there, and who isn't always the best, as seen in those pics ;)

I hate the Bakshi and Hildebrandt Brothers' pictures of Hobbits - they should be burnt, they have produced the most lumpen, ugly, garden-gnome like undignified Hobbits. Ugh. And that Hildebrandt illustration of Aragorn & Arwen's wedding always makes me laugh - it looks like a Klan gathering. :eek:

I quite like Roger Garland though - he's so trippy and his art comes out a bit like something disturbing by Bosch.

[narfforc]

..........then these are mumbling. I have always hated the Hildebrant versions, and Garland does very little for me. Bakshi's Sam is probably one of the worst visually ever. I still think the best Gandalf was done by Caulty. I have seen that slideshow Lal and you are right.......

[Morthoron]

Them thar' be some ghastly pictures, matey. I would elect #8 as the ghastliest. The reviewer caught the Pieta reference, but Boromir is modeled more on any one of several St. Sebastian portraits as well. And what's up with Aragorn as an old draq queen?

#6 is obviously the Bolshoi version of Beren and Luthien.

[The Might]

Oh, what I really find amusing is the cover of a Tolkien calendar Parmastahir once showed me.
Sauron looked like a strange radioactive cat, and Tolkien had been misspelled as Tolkein on the cover. Fortunately it wasn't used in any calendar.

I looked at the link he posted, it was from Ebay, and it seems the picture of this work of art no longer is there. Maybe someone finds it on the net...really funny anyway.

[davem]

Here's one of Hurin the Barbarian

http://img-fan.theonering.net/rolozo/images/marshall/hurin.jpg

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Here's a Hildebrandt drawing that has Aragorn telling his fishing story:

"And the one that got away was thiiiis big!"
(http://img-fan.theonering.net/rolozo/images/hildebrandt/pony.jpg)

Aside from the horribly childlike Hobbits, the one thing that strikes me most is Aragorn's boottops - do tell me how a Ranger is supposed to move silently when his footwear is apt to snag on every twig?!


And is this a depiction of Tolkien's version of the Holy Grail (http://img-fan.theonering.net/rolozo/images/hildebrandt/healingeowyn.jpg)?

[Lalwendë]

Here's a Hildebrandt drawing that has Aragorn telling his fishing story:

"And the one that got away was thiiiis big!"
(http://img-fan.theonering.net/rolozo/images/hildebrandt/pony.jpg)

Aside from the horribly childlike Hobbits, the one thing that strikes me most is Aragorn's boottops - do tell me how a Ranger is supposed to move silently when his footwear is apt to snag on every twig?!
?

It's the size of his feet that's troubling me. That and the disturbing fact that he looks like Ian 'beefy' Botham... :eek:

[THE Ka]

A link on the German Tolkien Society's forum lead me to a list of horrible paintings of Tolkien subjects. View and despair! :eek:

"The horror" by aervir (http://aervir.livejournal.com/9990.html?view=33286#t33286)

The exotic dancing Lúthien has to be the most ridiculous image I've seen so far.

Perhaps some of you have seen more awful pictures to add to the list?

I'm going to have to challenge your choice- #8 is a stab not only to Michelangelo (who was horribly depressed to begin with, give him a break!), but Dadaism since this obviously is a rather poor attempt at stabbing something in the face of the 'rules' of classical western art ... Plus, it makes you want to cry pitifully like Madonna of Pietà and laugh at the same time giving you a bad stomach ache.

The only 'good' slight difference is that this Pietà isn't so much out of porportion... Just in sotty taste.

Genie Morgoth and His Forty Thieves (http://www.isildur.com/tolkien/images/hosts.jpg)

This one is probably the 'best' so far of Morgoth and his compadre, the Witch-King...:rolleyes: :p

~ Critique Ka

[Lalwendë]

Genie Morgoth and His Forty Thieves (http://www.isildur.com/tolkien/images/hosts.jpg)

This one is probably the 'best' so far of Morgoth and his compadre, the Witch-King...:rolleyes: :p

~ Critique Ka

Morgoth there looks suspiciously like the divil as played by Dave Grohl in the Tenacious D video Tribute...

...this is not the greatest art in the world...;)

[Aiwendil]

I honestly don't see what's so bad about the Hildebrandts' "Wedding of Aragorn and Arwen". Though most of the rest of those are quite bad. The worst is undoubtedly the "exotic dancer" Luthien. And while I'm generally a fan of Nasmith and a defender of Bakshi's movie, Ulmo and Sam are certainly not their respective strong points.

[Bêthberry]

I honestly don't see what's so bad about the Hildebrandts' "Wedding of Aragorn and Arwen". Though most of the rest of those are quite bad. The worst is undoubtedly the "exotic dancer" Luthien. And while I'm generally a fan of Nasmith and a defender of Bakshi's movie, Ulmo and Sam are certainly not their respective strong points.

I think the Hildebrandts took their cue from that old postcard Tolkien had of his hiking trip in the Alps, the postcard with an old man on it that apparently provided some inspiration for Gandalf. This style is closely related to Swiss styles, which in my imagination belong with the illustrations of my girlhood edition of Heidi.

Some comments by davem and myself on Esty's other art thread, the good one, probably best belong on this thread:

Some thoughts on what makes for bad Tolkien art, from post #31 on the Tolkien the Artist thread. (http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?p=529596#post529596)

[davem]

The style I'm most uncomfortable with is the 'mighty thewed barbarian' - which I find borders on a fascistic, Ubermensch approach, & totally alien to Tolkien's creation. Conan always defeats the demons & monsters & attains victory through his physical strength & use of weapons. Turin, for example, is an inversion of the Ubermensch ideal. In fact Tolkien seems to be pointing up the stupidity & falsity of such an 'ideal' in the real world. The image of Hurin I linked to earlier is a classic example of everything Tolkien's work condemns.

I recall an interview with one of the editors at Harper Collins discussing Alan Lee's M-e work. She stated that she preferred Lee's work to that of other Tolkien artists, because too many depictions of Tolkien's characters had them looking directly at us, but she felt that that was wrong, & that the 'view' should be the other way - we should gaze into their world, they shouldn't look out into ours. I take her point. We're looking at a world long gone & he imagery should reflect that - those beings & places have long since passed from the world. The imagery shouldn't be 'dynamic', or make us feel the events are happening 'now'.

'For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground & tell sad stories of the death of Kings'. In Tolkien's tales we are looking back on things that happened before recorded history, & its essential that that mood is communicated by the artist - M-e is not another world in which events are happening 'now', but this world many, many ages past. That's why Baynes' & Juchimov's illustrations (& Eric Fraser's 'woodcut' style illustrations for the Folio Society Hobbit & LotR) work so well for me. (I think this is why I especially disliked the movie characters' regular lapses into contemporary idiom - nothing about M-e should feel 'modern': it should always feel 'old' & long past. Perhaps this is why dramatisation can't really work as well as reading or hearing the story......)

[alatar]

Remembered this thread, and looking "The Return of the King" CD audiobook box in my vehicle, I thought that I had a ringer and got ready to scan the cover. I was shocked to see that Rowena Morill's "The Last Steward" was already on the list.

:eek: What's up with the blonde women looking as if they'd rather be anywhere else (like the beach, the Mall, etc) than at a weird ceremony where surfer Adonis gives a scepter to King Aragorn?

Boring!

Even the soldier behind the King has better things to look at. But maybe he's just following his King's lead as the new King can't even look at the Apollo wannabee, and so isn't even holding his hand in the right place to receive the gift. Maybe the Steward is just too beautiful to be observed directly, like an anti-Medusa.

Are any of these people in the same scene? You could see if you took a bunch of disparate images, cut them out and glued them to a page, resulting in a picture where everyone is looking somewhere else. But actually creating this image like this?

It must be my lack of appreciation for the arts...

[TheGreatElvenWarrior]

Agh, I don't think that Luthien would wear a swimming suit. Since she was an elven princess or something to that nature that she would wear something sort of dressish.

[Lalaith]

I´ve seen that belly-dancer Luthien pic before and it always made me laugh (in a dismayed sort of way). Beren the battle-worn soldier gets his R&R...the poor professor would have had a fit if he´d seen it.

Here's a Hildebrandt drawing that has Aragorn telling his fishing story:

"And the one that got away was thiiiis big!"
(http://img-fan.theonering.net/rolozo/images/hildebrandt/pony.jpg)

As for this, it should be in crazy captions. "Oo, Aragorn, that was a really cool duck, but can you do the one when the dog moves his mouth and waggles his ears?"

[Rikae]

Aragorn in the fish-story pic:

"My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!"

[Oddwen]

Psst...I did post that one as a Crazy Caption a while back... ;)

[Rikae]

Psst...I did post that one as a Crazy Caption a while back... ;)

The resemblance is uncanny, isn't it? I thnk the Hildebrandts actually must have used Mandy as a model...

[Milady Revenwyn]

Oh my goodness, yes, he looks like Inigo...
But his boots are far too big.

[Laurinquë]

It's horrible! Horrible! It makes me sick! *wheezing*
How could anyone create that? Terrible person....

[Hilde Bracegirdle]

I have to wonder if the artists themselves are happy with what they have done, or if their intent has surpassed their skill. It is so much easier to criticise than create. That being said, I wish that artists whose style does not lend itself to such subjects, wouldn't feel compelled to attempt it!

[Parmastahir]

For your consideration and comment per a request of me from The Might, an unused (for reasons which will become apparent even without the obvious error in the artwork) illustration for a Tolkien calendar (see attachment).

I appreciate davem's comments and find what is wrong with many of the bad (or worst) illustrations in them. It is easy to be critical of the illustrators (justly or not) when their concept of Middle-earth fails to match ours. The imagery conjured up in our minds' eyes by Tolkien's masterful prose can never be matched by an illustrator's ... no matter how good they are or how close they come to what we have seen we have become lost in the books. In spite of that, I have collected well over 200 Tolkien calendars and I very much enjoy the attempts the hundreds of artists have made.

However, some are wrong (or, in the vernacular, "That just ain't right!") In "The Last Stewards", the prostitutes on the left, Aragorn's disinterest in the Sceptre of Numenor, and the inattentive rudeness of the apparently bored clowns on the left (what could possibly be more important to discuss at that moment??) "just ain't right!"

Away from The Green Hill Country,

Parmastahir

[The Might]

Thanks, Parmastahir! :D

[THE Ka]

I kind of get the vibe that the artist wanted to 'tie' in the Sauron/Melkor association with cats. I dunno, best guess of mine. :confused:
Looking at that face though, I just want to go and hug my feline fluff of fur.

I have to agree though, no one is practicularly going to have an illustration in the same light as Tolkien's, or maybe Alan Lee's (I say his name as well, because he has worked with the Tolkien family for some years now), so some takes on certain events might come off as strange to the rest of us.

Then again, some are just too odd it is more puzzling than humourious.

Personally, I don't think I could ever illustrate Sauron after the fall of Numenor, since Tolkien had his image in such a way that is familiar and very distinct, but particularly hard to encompass beyond the 'great eye' factor. Sometimes words can do the best in our minds for certain things, though it doesn't mean all things illustrated are a 'tainted image' of the original.

Also because, it is quite interesting and fun to make Sauron as this suave and sly advisor, appealing to the wants and wishes of kings. :p

~ Ka

[Gwathagor]

Lord have mercy! HAAAA! :eek::eek:

A link on the German Tolkien Society's forum lead me to a list of horrible paintings of Tolkien subjects. View and despair! :eek:

"The horror" by aervir (http://aervir.livejournal.com/9990.html?view=33286#t33286)

The exotic dancing Lúthien has to be the most ridiculous image I've seen so far.

Perhaps some of you have seen more awful pictures to add to the list?

[Mnemosyne]

Just tried to bring this up again and found out the original journal link is dead.

PORQUE????!!??

[Lindale]

No biggie, Mnemosyne; key in "Luthien" in google images, and endless images of this (http://home.comcast.net/~mithrandircq/images_new/Beren_Luthien.jpg) will... at the very least, make you go "omigosh."

[Mnemosyne]

No biggie, Mnemosyne; key in "Luthien" in google images, and endless images of this (http://home.comcast.net/~mithrandircq/images_new/Beren_Luthien.jpg) will... at the very least, make you go "omigosh."

Oh, yes, that one stuck in my mind easily enough for me to find it again... that and the botched Pieta-style "Death of Boromir" that still makes my brain explode...

But I know there are some other pics that were on the page that I can't recall enough about to summon the Magical Key Words with which to retrieve them.

Ah, well--such is the fate of all things in this Middle-earth... :(

[Gwathagor]

Gondor has no pants...Gondor needs no pants...

[THE Ka]

that and the botched Pieta-style "Death of Boromir" that still makes my brain explode...

I brought that into art history class once. Massive brain hemorrhaging ensured.



Gondor has no pants...Gondor needs no pants...

Not to worry, they make up for it by milking a giant invisible cow (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MilkingTheGiantCow).


~ "I'm sick of milking this giant, invisible... cow all the time." Ka

[Faramir Jones]

Below is the link to an art gallery, stocked with well-known works alleged to have been inspired by Tolkien:

http://flyingmoose.org/tolksarc/gallery/gallery.htm.

;)

Also, you'll find attached an interesting portrait of Sauron. :)

[Mithalwen]

Wonderful link...just when I was convinced that there was no good Tolkien art (apart from the pictures by the man himself of course.. ).

[Galadriel55]

http://www.cedmagic.com/featured/tolkien/lotr-3-1115-treebeard-find.jpg

Treebeard.

:eek:

Reminds me more of a carrot than a tree. :rolleyes:

Edit: I see the image has been removed from the link I posted above... this (http://www.cedmagic.com/featured/tolkien/lotr-3-1115-treebeard-find.html)is the same picture... let's hope it shows...

[Aganzir]

The Death of Boromir (http://25.media.tumblr.com/86b5ea3f5d888eea43285861ffe6e90f/tumblr_mlvwgskEBZ1s2y08co1_500.jpg) by the Brothers Gentile.

The longer I look at it, the more it amuses me. :D

[Inziladun]

The Death of Boromir (http://25.media.tumblr.com/86b5ea3f5d888eea43285861ffe6e90f/tumblr_mlvwgskEBZ1s2y08co1_500.jpg) by the Brothers Gentile.

The longer I look at it, the more it amuses me. :D

What's Iggy Pop (http://www.rollingstone.com/music/artists/iggy-pop) doing there in the back? :p

[Galadriel55]

The Death of Boromir (http://25.media.tumblr.com/86b5ea3f5d888eea43285861ffe6e90f/tumblr_mlvwgskEBZ1s2y08co1_500.jpg) by the Brothers Gentile.

The longer I look at it, the more it amuses me. :D

It reminds me of one of those optical illusions where you think it's going up but it's actually going down, or something of that sort. At first glance Boromir and Aragorn both seem to be looking at Legolas, but then you realize Aragorn is actually looking above Legolas' head, Legolas seems to look a bit in front of Boromir's head (but that's just the way his head is positioned), and Boromir doesn't seem to roll his eyes far enough to really see Legolas. And Gimli just stares off into space. Although... when I think of it, he is looking in the same direction as Aragorn.

I totally agree that the amusement increases with the time!

[Aganzir]

Yes, and it's also a classical Lamentation of Christ composition, with hints of St. Sebastian. :p I don't know my art history well enough to tell if it's based on any particular painting, but Aragorn as Virgin Mary is definitely one of the funniest things about it.

[Nerwen]

Yes, and it's also a classical Lamentation of Christ composition, with hints of St. Sebastian. :p I don't know my art history well enough to tell if it's based on any particular painting, but Aragorn as Virgin Mary is definitely one of the funniest things about it.
But it's *intended* as a joke... right? Right???:eek:

[Aganzir]

But it's *intended* as a joke... right? Right???:eek:
I'm pretty sure it is. They must have had fun while painting it.

On the other hand, I've lately come across a lot of Tolkien art which is simply awful quality... but then again, that's always the case with fan art, and it would hardly be fair to share something on this thread only due to lack of artistic talent.

[Aganzir]

I am sure you all can appreciate this vision of the Barrow (http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbansy7CAO1rq6r8yo1_500.jpg) by Michael Herring.

[Inziladun]

Ha! I love that one. I still think of Frodo saying "Talk to the hand!: :D

[Aganzir]

Yes! However it's beyond me how he chopped the hand off, what with it looking so thick. And incorporeal.

[Galadriel55]

I am sure you all can appreciate this vision of the Barrow (http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbansy7CAO1rq6r8yo1_500.jpg) by Michael Herring.

Though I've seen the picture before, the first thing I noticed now was how empty the barrow full of riches was. You call those few beads a treasure?

[Faramir Jones]

What always creeped me out was that the hand shown took all the clothes off three of the hobbits, and then dressed them in those white robes...:eek: