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I find many of the images from the "Visions, Myths, and Legends" chapter quite fascinating. There are, on the one hand, pictures of the sort you'd expect: scenes and places associated with Tolkien's mythology. But I was surprised by some of the pictures that bear no apparent relation to his literary work. I would certainly love to have a copy of The Book of Ishness.
I wonder whether anyone has any thoughts on the pair "Before" and "Afterwards". Hammond and Scull speculate that in moving from the first image to the second we have gone through a door to find a figure on a torchlit path; they suggest that this represents "the entrance to Death" and "the soul travelling on its way". This seems a reasonable interpretation, but there is little in either picture to suggest it particularly. If it were not for the titles, the pictures would have no obvious connection aside from a similarity in style - and yet the titles suggest not only a connection but a specific program. In any case, I think that "Before", as simple as it is, is one of the most evocative pictures Tolkien drew.
"Undertenishness" and "Grownupishness" appear to form another pair. Both surprised me when I first saw them: "Undertenishness" for its trick of being both a forest and a butterfly and "Grownupishness" for its cartoonish style.
Tolkien makes interesting use of watercolours in some of the other images from this chapter. In "Water, Wind, & Sand", "Tanaqui", and "The Shores of Faery" he presents highly stylized images from his mythology. The flat, sectional approach he uses is rather effective, I think. "Water, Wind, & Sand" in particular evokes the same feeling as the poem with which it is associated.
In some ways, I can't help but think, these early pictures are similar to his early writing (mainly the Book of Lost Tales); they are at once more primitive, more varied, and more experimental than his later work.
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