Tolkien Etchings

Pen on Rives BFK

22 x 15 inches

As far as Tolkien’s villains go I find Melkor to be more interesting than Sauron, especially the way he was in Valinor before he became Morgoth, when he deceived Feanor and many of the Valar, and this was the incarnation that I was interested in capturing in this drawing for my series based on the Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings, as well as The Children of Hurin. Among the models I used to help me create my idea of Melkor, many were the same as those I used for my etchings of Gandalf, but a new one that really gave me the best image of malevalance was the young, beautiful Marlon Brando. I was watching a scene from “A Streetcar Named Desire” where he devastates the hapless Blanche, and realized that with his good looks and all the seething hatred inside, this particular Brando gave much that related to Melkor.

His transformation into Morgoth also makes Melkor interesting to me, and I’ll be drawing this version of him soon.