Tolkien Etchings

My etching “Ancalagon”, for my suite devoted to the writing of J.R.R. Tolkien, was partly inspired by the fact that he was the greatest of all the winged dragons. However, since he was mentioned so little by Tolkien, only once in the Silmarillion, and just in passing in The Lord of the Rings, his wonderfully intense name — ANCALAGON THE BLACK — was even more responsible for capturing my imagination.The artistic challenge here, it seemed to me, was to create the quintessential dragon, and, also, to capture the feeling that his name induces of extreme blackness visually, and implied insidiousness and malevolence. My approach was to make Ancalagon as simple as possible, leaving out any horns or ruffles etcetera, giving him only the essential elements needed to fulfill this vision. Below are my notes to myself at the very first moment when I began to conceive of this etching, pretty much verbatim.

I hope to create another etching of Ancalagon in the scene where Morgoth unleashes the dragons from Thangorodrim, in the last battle with the Valar.

Ancalagon the Black:

wicked, monstrous, jet black, gleaming
calm, cool, cynical, cold
fairly simple, not too many horns
slithery, yet massive
potent
massive, but not macho — powerful
oppressive, deadly
eyes gleaming