Untitled

Enamel and latex on paper on fiberboard

8 x 10 feet

Although this site is about our beloved J.R.R.Tolkien, and his merry band of characters: Frodo, Gandalf, Aragorn, the cheerful Sauron, and gentle Balrog, I felt it was now time, as John Cleese used to say, for something completely different. I confess I have no rational for this, other than that I have moved into another direction in my art. I’ll talk more about my new focus later, but just to give you an idea, I was thinking about calling the above painting “Micheljackson”. It’s just a tad bigger than my 9 x 12 inch etchings, measuring 8 x 10 feet.

This piece is still in progress. I’ve been photographing it at different points to help me work on it since, as Pollock did, I’m working on the floor. So here are the first two states.

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Etching 8×10 inches

Glamdring, Gandalfs great Elfen sword, and Anglachel, later known as Gurthang wielded by both Beleg and Turin Turambar, played very important rules in their respective stories, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion/ The Children of Turin, by J.R.R.Tolkien. Glaurung the greatest of the fire breathing dragons was slain by Gurthang, and Glamdring, found in the Trolls stash, in The Hobbit, was Gandalfs weapon, along with his staff throughout the decisive moments in the war of the Ring, including his epic battle with the Balrog, in the caverns of Khazad-dum.

Swords hold a fascination for me despite their horrible function of killing people. They are sexy, beautiful, phallic, and irresistible to a sculptor. I hope to capture more of them that are now in my imagination.

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Etching 8×10 inches

This image of Sauron in the top of Barad-dur in the land of Mordor, perhaps as Frodo and Sam saw it when they where on the plane of Gorgoroth, from The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R.Tolkien, is my latest etching. This piece has elements that have been around in sketches going back more than 30 years. The spiral sort of lattice work of the windows, and the cloud-like image of the not yet coalesced Sauron date from the seventies, and the shape of the top of the tower from years later, maybe the eighties? (I’ve been playing around with this stuff for a long time)

I feel that this piece fairly successfully express my image of Barad-dur in that it captures what to me was the most dominant element of Tolkien’s description, its BLACKNESS. The extraordinarily powerful description of it from The Fellowship (which I actually memorized) goes, “…wall upon wall, battlement upon battlement, black, immeasurable strong, mountain of iron, gate of steel, tower of adamant…”. And also it works in that it gives an almost palpable sense of malevolence.

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Pen on Reeves BFK

19 x 24 inches

My latest drawing in my series based on the Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and other works by J.R.R.Tolkien “The Shadow of the Past”, depicts the moment when Frodo having just been told by Gandalf the truth about Bilbo’s ring, begins to realize the magnitude of the danger that he and everyone in hobbiton are in. I have always enjoyed Tolkien’s image of the dark, cloud-like hand reaching out from Mordor and Sauron, and threatening to engulf Frodo, and this was one of the main elements that inspired this piece. Though I think it works well as a pen drawing, this piece also has the chiaroscuro that makes me definitely want to do it as an etching.

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Etching 12 x 9 inches

This is the final version of my etching of Eowyn, with Merry looking on, confronting the Ringwraith, Lord of the Nazgul, The Witch King of Angmar in the midst of the battle of the Pellenor Fields from J.R.R.Tolkien’s, The Lord of the Rings.

I feel that I captured the nightmarish feeling of this scene, of being face to face with the second most powerful malevolent being in Middle Earth. And also the thing that was most important to me, and most appropriate to capture in an etching, that the Lord of the Nazgul, on his winged beast, was as “a great shadow descending like a falling cloud”. This along with Eowyn’s tremendous courage in standing erect in defiance, and her long blond hair showing very clearly that she was not a man, where some of the elements that inspired me in this most powerful scene.

Also there are some important details in this piece that I felt it very important, and exciting, to represent, (and that, I have to say, are often missing or altered in other depictions) .  One is that the winged beast has a beak, (as I mentioned elsewhere).  And also, something that I found very striking in the Witch King’s description, the fact that between his crown and robe there was nothing to be seen except,”a deadly gleam of eyes”.

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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.

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For my etchings Gandalf the Mastermind 1st, and second state, in my series of etchings and drawings based on The Lord of the Rings, the Silmarillion, and other works of J.R.R.Tolkien, the above photos, taped to a piece of cardboard, where some of the materials I used as an aid to capturing my vision of Mithrandir. For a recently finished drawing of Melkor, ironically, or perhaps not, some of the same photos where used. The three photos of Ian McKellen will be obvious to all Tolkien fans. Perhaps less familiar may be the two photos top middle of the author Samuel Becket, and the three of Basil Rawthbone, the one on the lower right the most important for my image. The other people are friends, and others with aspects that relate to Gandalf - Tim in the upper right having perhaps the world’s longest eyebrows.

Though I use photographic images in my work they are purely an aid for detail. At all times what is paramount to me, to paraphrase Beethoven, is crystallizing that cloud-like, yet very specific image I have in my head.

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Etching

12 x9 inches

For my etching titled Gandalf the Mastermind 2nd state, I added in the middle of the background the One Ring, and, going clockwise from the upper left, The Grey Havens, Hobbiton, Rivendale, Lothlorien, Rohan, Minas Tirith, and finally Mordor, which where some of the important places in The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R.Tolkien, visited by the heroes on their quest to save Middle Earth from the Dark Lord Sauron. These immages where added to the same copper etching plate from which the original Gandalf the mastermind was printed.

I had in mind to do something that would indicate how Gandalf was contemplating the entire strategic situation in Middle Earth, and thus to show what made him a mastermind. I considered different approaches, such as showing the most important characters, like Frodo, Aragorn, Sauron, Elrond, Saruman and Galadriel, or simbols, like the Three Rings, The Winged Crown of Gondor, Barehir’s Ring and so forth. Finally, I went with the important locations because it showed the path of the quest, and I even drew a tiny road passing through the Ring, the significance of which is obvious.

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#2 Pencil on Rives BFK

30 x 22 inches

My latest illustration based on The Silmarillion, The Lord of the Rings, and The Children of Hurin, by J.R.R.Tolkien is a pencil drawing of Yavanna, the Valar, and one of the Aratar, the wife of Alue, and known to the Elves as Kementari. So far many of the images in my series have been of dark and/or violent subjects, such as Turin slaying Glaurung, Glorfindel battling the balrog, or Luthien Tinuviel and Beren confronting Morgoth in the nethermost chamber of Thangorodrim. So this piece came about as I sorely needed to create some images of a lighter tone. Though Yavanna was responsible for creating all growing things, I wanted to present her among flowers, as this would give the brightest most positive image possible.

As I wanted to keep this image very light, both emotionally and visually, I used only a number 2 pencil. The particular brand I used has slightly harder lead than others, making it very easy to blend. It also has possibly the most romantic name of any drawing implement I’ve ever heard of, Mirado Black Warrior. (no, I’m not making it up)

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Charcoal and Compressed Charcoal on Rives BFK

30 x 22 inches

My latest drawing is from Tolkien’s most recently published book, “The Children of Hurin”, and depicts Turin Turambar, with the sword Gurthang, (originally known as Anglachel), slaying the lord of the fire-breathing dragons Glaurung, in the narrow chasm of the Teiglin river. Compositionally this was a difficult picture. The dragon being rather a long bodied creature tends to make one think that a horizontal composition is best. But when I laid it out this way, Turin being, of course, much smaller than Glaurung, becomes so tiny that no real details can be shown of him. This is because a human figure is essentially a vertical form, and when the page is horizontal, with the very large form of a dragon at the top, there is left very little height for the figure. I made a good many sketches attempting to solve this problem. My breakthrough came when I realized that I could orient the page vertically if I used a worms-eye point of view. By doing this, Turin could be drawn large enough to give him facial detail (which was very important to me), and also Glaurung shown in his, correctly, much larger proportion to Turin. This is because, being higher in the composition, the dragon is now much farther from the observer’s point of view, and therefore visually smaller than he would be if he where at the same level as Turin. Also giving Glaurung an extremely arched back, as he is “feeling his death-pang”, allowed me to depict almost all of his body.

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