Alan Lee:
Quote:
My chief concern in illustrating LotR was in attempting to provide a visual accompaniment for the story without interfering with, or dislodging, the pictures the author is carefully building up in the reader's mind. i felt that my task lay in shadowing the heroes on their epic quest, often at a distance, closing in on them at times of heightened emotion but avoiding trying to re-create the dramatic high points of the text.....
Such considerations were made simpler by technical ones. Printed seperately on a coated art paper, the pictures had to be positioned at intervals of sixteen or thirty two pages throughout the book. This limitation was recieved gratefully & probably saved weeks of fruitless agonising over which moments to illustrate.
It was important that every picture should be relevant to the text on the opposite page. (from 'Tolkien's World: Paintings of Middle-earth')
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As to the B&W illustrations in CoH, Lee has chosen to top & tail the chapters with 'mood pieces'. Its clearly been his approach to Tolkien illustration all along, so I don't see how we can criticise his choice. If you choose AL to illustrate a Tolkien book this is the kind of illustration you'll get. You can complain about the choice of AL as artist, but not about the way he'll illustrate the book.
As to the 'Gelmir' thing, I find it actually more horrible in Tolkien's stark description than it could ever be in any illustration. Also, & I think this is a significant point, some readers have both a more graphic imagination & a stronger stomach than others, & what would be a perfectly acceptable illustration for some readers would be totally unnacceptable to others. Even reading about the death of Gelmir some readers will visualise that in long shot (or not at all) while others picture it in the most extreme & gory close up with blood spurting, hacked off limbs twitching & Gelmir's face contorted in an agonised scream. The text leaves the reader free to imagine the scene as they will, but any illustration would fix a particular image for the reader - which is why AL prefers (according to what he has said) to 'keep his distance'.