I have experienced the same feeling of the films being very similar to my own interpretations. And I have NOT been exposed to much of the art of Alan Lee or John Howe, or any other. I think a large part of the credit must go more towards JRRT and his vivid descriptions of just about every location of interest.
In fact, much of his detail has too much detail, if that's possible! Exhibit A:
Quote:
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Many great trees grew there, planted long ago, falling into untended age amid a riot of careless descendants; and groves and thickets there were of tamarisk and pungent terebinth, of olive and of bay; and there were junipers and myrtles; and thymes that grew in bushes, or with their woody creeping stems mantled in deep tapestries the hidden stones; sages of many kinds putting forth blue flowers, or red, or pale green; and marjorams and new-sprouting parsleys, and many herbs of forms and scents beyond the garden-lore of Sam. The grots and rocky walls were already starred with saxifrages and stonecrops. Primeroles and anemones were awake in the filbert-brakes; and asphodel and many lily-flowers nodded their half-opened heads in the grass: deep green grass beside the pools, where falling streams halted in cool hollows on their journey down to Anduin.
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terebinth? saxifrages? anemones? asphodel?
My generally reliable imagination was put to the test with this paragraph detailing Ithilien!!