My name is John and I am into Comics, Movies, Artwork, Painting, Rock'n'Roll and Music in General and Pop-Culture in particular. I enjoy polite discussions and requests!
Private commission, from The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Pen and ink, watercolor, 24 K gold.
Gandalf/Olorin, Cirdan, Celembribor, Gil Galad, Melian, Galadriel, Elrond, Arwen, The Elven Rings, The Elessar, and a symbolic Belt of Melian.
No, I'm not playing hooky on Good Omens, I get about 20 minutes a day to work on other stuff.
I was getting a half hour a day, but even that's too much at this point.
And yes, at roughly 25 minutes a day, a piece like this takes a really long time. Months.
I'm a big believer in making sure you pick at something else even while working on a big project, even if you only use that time for warm ups. Keeps you from crumbling under the weight of the main project.
that’s the whole point of frodo—there is nothing special about him, he’s a hobbit, he’s short and likes stories, smokes pipeweed and makes mischief, he’s a young man like other young men, except for the singularly important fact that he is the one who volunteers. there is this terrible thing that must be done, the magnitude of which no one fully understands and can never understand before it is done, but frodo says me and frodo says I will.
(when boromir is thinking of how he can use the ring to defend gondor, when aragorn is thinking of how it brought down proud isildur, when elrond is holding council and gandalf is thinking of how twisted he would become, if he ever dared—)
but then there’s frodo, who desires nothing except what he has already left behind him, and says, I will take the Ring.
it is an offer made out of absolute innocence, utter sincerity. It is made without knowing what it will make of him—and frodo loses everything to the ring, he loses peace and himself and the shire, he loses the ability to be in the world. It’s cruel, the ring is cruel, it searches out every weakness you have and feeds on it, drinks you dry and fills you with its poison instead, the ring is so cruel.
and frodo picks it up willingly. for no other reason except that it has to be done.
(the ring warps boromir into a hopeless grasping dead thing, the power of the palantir turns denethor into an old man, jealous and suspicious, it bends even saruman, once the proudest of the istari, into a mechanised warlord, sitting in his fortress and bent over his perverse creations—all the best of intentions, laid waste)
but there’s a reason gollum exists in the narrative, which is to show—well, to show what frodo might have been. because even as frodo grows mistrustful and wearied, as the burden of this ring grows heavier and heavier, he is never gollum. he is gentle to gollum. he is afraid—god frodo is so afraid for 2/3 of these books he is so tired and afraid, but he keeps moving, he walks though it would pull him into the ground, because he asked for this, he said he would.
someone else could have carried the ring to mordor, I suppose. the idea of a martyr is not dependent on the particular flesh and blood person dying for some greater purpose. but such a thing has to be chosen, lifted onto your shoulders for the right reason, the truest reasons, and followed into the dark, though it would see you burnt through and bled out.
I will take the Ring, though I do not know the way.
y'know say what you want about tumblr (and I have), but this is still probably the simplest and most powerful distillation of the heart of the Lord of the Rings I’ve ever read. I think back to it all the time
Well put. While I have nothing so poignantly poetic to add, it should be noted that Tolkien repeatedly stated how much he disliked the concept of allegory, and yet so so much of the Lord of the Rings reflects his life after having served in World War 1. Frodo is every young man that went off with idealism to fight in the Great War, and then came home as broken shells of who they were as boys.
Tolkien was at the Battle of the Somme. He served in the most horrific war anyone had ever thought possible, and was present at one of the longest and bloodiest and most pointless battles from that war. Imagine what that does to you as a person. He disliked allegory, but it bears noting that so much of his idealized self and the idealized versions of his dead friends became Frodo and Samwise and all the rest.
So much of the Great War was driven not by the death of Arch Duke Ferdinand, but by an entire generation of young men that had technology and abilities that their father’s never dreamt of, and a desire to prove themselves as heroes.
But Frodo didn’t want to be hero. Frodo just wanted to do what needed to be done. Although he didn’t know the way, and he didn’t know what it would cost him.
That resolute choice to stand up and do what must be done in the face of absolute horror. Even the plot of the Lord of the Rings is somewhat reminiscent of a tour of military service. A leisurely existence, with a looming threat in a far away land. Tales from his Uncle of adventure and danger long ago. And then the mantle of manhood and responsibility is passed to Frodo. And suddenly Frodo has to confront this great evil. And it’s not one climactic sword fight. It’s a slow, meandering walk, steadily getting more and more dangerous as the end comes into sight. And at the end, like a wounded soldier on the battlefield being carried away on medical leave, the Eagles come in and bring Frodo and Samwise back from the horrors of war.
Tolkien was not a fan of allegory, but he -knowingly or not- wrote a story that reflects a lot of the experiences he had as a young man.
it’s just hard not to think about the fact that in 1915, JRR Tolkien went to war not with but certainly in the same army and many of the same battles as his 3 best school friends, all nicely upper class young men who had never known much loss, and only he and one other came back alive - and a couple decades later, he wrote a book in which 3 nicely upper class young men (and one very excellent gardener) who have never known much loss go to war together, or at least they start out together, and they all come home alive. (Though one cannot bear it, and does not stay.)
What more it wasn’t just losing his friends, he was a commanding officer of a battalion of working class men. All farmers and miners from the same area of Lancashire. He felt affinity for them, but wasn’t allowed to socialize between the ranks due to military protocol and he hated it.
"The most improper job of any man ... is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity."
I don’t think it was even 6 months later that he contracted trench fever and was sent home.
His entire command was wiped out in one charge shortly after, the majority of a whole countryside’s youths slaughtered while he survived. Youths who were brave and steadfast, but thought of as lesser than their superior officers while still being the ones carrying the actual battle. Youths who deserved fellowship, respect, and above all to go home and dance with their own Rosie.
“My Sam Gamgee is indeed a reflection of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognised as so far superior to myself”.
About 1.2-1.3 Million young men died in the trenches of that battle between July and November of 1916. 5 months, and more than a million men under the age of 25 were killed, maimed, poisoned, infected, blown up, shot, or just died of trench-life related illnesses. And no ground was gained by either side. A lot of it was about the commanding officers wanting to prove themselves as capable leaders. Neither side won any real ground. Nothing was decided. Both sides just eventually, stubbornly realized they were getting nowhere. At the cost of more than a million young men. A generation of people died in 5 months and it was FOR NOTHING.
The cynicism for war that arises from surviving that sort of experience is palpable in Tolkien’s work. There’s a longing for idyllic, pastoral life. There is also a vehement opposition to industry, and to the destruction of the world in the name of progress. Tolkien’s great horror is that all of the world would look like Mordor - a vast realm of industry and warfare.
In Lord of the Rings: When Gandolf the grey dies, fighting the Demon in the mines, he comes back as Gandolf the White? Now is Gandolf dead ? you kind of get that- he is back. just til they defeat Mordor; and the author makes it seem like he is a different Gandolf ,but then, at the end whenr they throw the ring in the Volcano-he seems to be just regular Gandolf again.. This is confusing. Maybe someone literary can answer.
Gandalf is (I believe the word is) a “Maiar”. All of the Wizards of Middle Earth are Maiar. Including Sauron.
Sauron is the only Maiar that served the Dark Lord, Melkor. Melkor is like the super devil. The Elves locked Melkor away in the First or Second Age. (Read the Silmarillion).
All of the other Wizards served the Lord of Light (God) Illuvatar.
Pronounced “ill-you-va-tar”.
A Maiar is, in broad terms, a lot like an Angel. The Wizards are not men that learned a lot spells. They are a separate race of beings, just like the Elves, the Dwarves, the Ents, and the Men.
Just like Sauron was a corrupted Maiar, all of the dark forces of Middle Earth were corruptions of the light forces. Orcs and Goblins were the result of Sauron and Melkor torturing and experimenting upon captured Elves. The Balrogs, the trolls, and so forth are all corrupted counterpoints to the Ents and the Wizards. The dragons are the bad versions of the Eagles. Get it?
Now, to answer your question directly, ask yourself how many times you saw Gandalf cast a spell. He had a Wizards duel with Saruman and they threw each other around the room. Other than that, he mostly just spoke to animals and used his staff to create light. When he returns as Gandalf the White, Saruman sneers at “his new found piety”. Piety is a very specific word to use. Piety. Faith. Religious belief. Gandalf became Gandalf the White because he proved himself most worthy of serving as Illuvatar’s foremost champion. Illuvatar’s most pious. He did not die, because his lord needed him to continue his services.
The main theme of the Lord of the Rings is death and finding meaning in death. JRR Tolkien served in World War 1, and he was at the Batte of the Somme. It had a big effect on him, whether he would admit it or not. The afterlife and the religions of Middle Earth were kind of a mash-up of Celtic and Norse mythology, along with Christianity. Tolkien wanted to create a new mythology that was specific to Great Britain. He was a linguistics professor at Oxford. So he spent all of his time teaching about literature from all over Northern Europe, and reading texts in multiple languages from all over Northern Europe.
Perhaps I am being biased, but I am going to say that Ungoliant would probably defeat Lolth. Lolth is the Demon Queen Goddess of the Drow Elves… but Ungoliant is the Elder God of Spiders and Ungoliant was the size of Manhattan Island.
Lolth would probably feel like she was in the presence of her Goddess. And before you start thinking about spell casting, remember what Ungoliant means: it means devourer of light.
Ungoliant ate a Silmaril. One of the three magically imbued gems that were so bright and powerful that their loss made the creation of the Sun necessary. And Ungoliant ate one. A Spider that ate the equivalent of a third of the Sun.
Yeah, Ungoliant would win.
darkforgottenshores
Ungoliant never ate a Silmaril. She did however, suck the light and life out of the Two Trees (Telperion and Laurelin) of Valinor that lit up the world. The Silmarils captured some of the light of them though.
Probably right. I haven’t re-read the Silmarillion in a while. So, she ate the entirety of the Sun. But I seem to remember her eating one, and then Melkor took it from her or something, and he bejeweled his iron crown with the two Silmarils he had. They burnt his hands and he was deformed, but I know he got at least 2 of them, and one of the two was acquired while he was in dispute with Ungoliant.
Now I have to read it again…
I know that anything and everything in DnD is, in part, inspired by or derivative of Tolkien’s work. Implying otherwise is just false. Wheel of Time probably has more directly in common with what Gary Gygax was reading, but all of it comes from Tolkien in some form or fashion. Terry Pratchet called Tolkien the Mount Fuji of Fantasy, in that everyone since Tolkien is either consciously choosing to stand directly upon Tolkien’s shoulders, or is consciously choosing to not stand upon Tolkien’s shoulders. And in either case, Tolkien is the primary influence.
Long story short, the Drow Goddess would pray to Ungoliant. Lolth would feel like she was in the presence of her Goddess if she ever met Ungoliant.
darkforgottenshores
She definitely wanted to eat them though! And would have if Melkor hadn’t shrieked, and his balrogs came to rescue him!
I am American as all-get-out. Stranger Things is practically a documentary about my rural childhood;there were a million little sense memory triggers in that series for me. Sothere is probably a cultural context to that very very English essay thatdiscusses a very very English relationship to lulling sentimentality and class and the countryside that I willfully concede that I am simply not grasping. The English seem tothink entirely in terms of debating sentimental imagery: “Mother London” vs.the “Ploughman’s Lunch” and “Little Britain.” Althought it is a serious issue,listening to British debates on Brexit often felt like hearing to the “Darmokand Jalad at Tanagra” aliens from TNG having a loud argument about who’s Momloves them more.
But…from my perspectiveas an outsider and foreigner, I think the general point Moorcock makes iscorrect: Fantasy was created by men like Tolkien and Lord Dunsany who wereviolently hostile to the modern world and so their work very studiously avoidedtalking about the modern world except in opposition to it (for instance, theonly person to push industrialization and scouring the countryside is anasshole wizard; the only person who talks like T.S. Elliot’s Londoners is the despicableSméagol). Lord Dunsany was a great writer, but seems like a thin-bloodedaristocrat, like a Brit Ashley Wilkes from GoneWith the Wind, who even in the 1970s, wrotehis stories with a quill pen and wore an ascot tie to book readings.
Moorcock is right whenhe says that fantasy often avoids reflecting the world around us, and thatbeing overly sentimental about the past serves the interest of reactionaries(note that he did not call Tolkien and Dunsany and the rest reactionaries…atleast in a way that was visible in their work – he did say that about Adams andLewis though). The most important quote in that essay is “Ideally fiction should offer us escape and force us, at least, to askquestions; it should provide a release from anxiety but give us some insightinto the causes of anxiety.” I mean, fantasy as a genre was so detachedfrom “real world” issues that when someone like Tad Williams started to includesomething as fundamental as economics into his fantasy worlds starting in the1980s, people treated him like a total genius (Which Tad Williams IS,incidentally - these days, people only really know Tad Williams, if they knowhim at all, as the inspiration for George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones).
One of the great themesof Moorcock’s work is the way that authoritarians use sentimental imagery ofthe past to manipulate people. If you read Epic Pooh, also read his other book,“The Dreamthief’s Daughter,” the opening third to half is set in Nazi Germany.It’s actually more helpful to understand the point of this essay to read “Dreamthief’sDaughter,” since, in the words of Francois Truffaut, “the only way to critiquea movie properly is to make another movie.” Dreamthief’s Daughter starts with a“Good German,” von Bek, who is horrified that his Germany was taken over byNazism, how they replace “self respect with a kind of strutting self-esteem.”At one point, our hero has to hide in the German countryside, and he mentionshow sinister the small storybook German towns he passes through seem, romanticized by fascists after Hitlercame to power, as they were pushed front and center as the “true Germany.”
Of all the books everwritten about the Nazis and arch-reactionaries, Moorcock gets it the most rightin “Dreamthief’s Daughter.” They were boring failsons, not supervillains.Rudolf Hess was described as the most irritating person to sit next to on thebus to a con and who believed magic and ghosts were real; von Bek said that “inmy many adventures, I showed true courage only once: in not throwing RudolfHess out of my car.” Von Bek’s comments on Hitler himself: “An evening withHitler was like an evening with an extremely boring maiden aunt.” He was alsothe first person I can think of to point out how reactionary fascists oftenhave really bad taste, too: drawing imagery from bad comic operas and Americanmovies about Rome. That last bit should be all too familiar to people whonotice how many American reactionaries love the hell out of the movie 300 (amovie I really like too, incidentally, but it’s okay to enjoy something if you understand it).
Also, “Dreamthief’sDaughter” had a great finale: imagine a flight of dragons coming out to fight theBattle of Britain.
The point, that fantasycan be infantilizing, is a good point, but Moorcock is the weirdestpossible person on the face of the earth to make it. Moorcock got famous bywriting about brooding angsty albinos who cry all the time for the benefit ofteenage heavy metal fans and dungeon masters in Reeboks. I love his stuff but that’s who he is,that’s the stuff that pays his mortgage, that’s his audience. His stuff is good but it reminds me ofthose White Wolf games in the 1990s that look silly and dated in retrospectbecause they trowel on the angst and transgression and put on airs (White Wolf,incidentally, was named after Moorcock’s greatest hero, Elric the White Wolf…andin the 1990s, White Wolf’s publishing arm dedicated itself to reprinting someof Moorcock’s less widely seen novels, a service for which I thank them verymuch). I am actually legitimately surprised that Moorcock never wrote a “sad sexy vampire” novel. God, can you imagine the kind of satire that the anarchic MAD magazine of the 50s would do of the Elric stuff? Elric screaming his soul is black at the breakfast table, while threatening to kill himself over a hangnail.
J.R.R. Tolkien has become a sort of mountain, appearing in all subsequent fantasy in the way that Mt Fuji appears so often in Japanese prints. Sometimes it’s big and up close. Sometimes it’s a shape on the horizon. Sometimes it’s not there at all, which means that the artist either has made a deliberate decision against the mountain, which is interesting in itself, or is in fact standing on Mt Fuji.
Does your tumblr name come from LOTR? Mother of Shelob, might have been Silmarillion, I ferget. Just curious, thx... Love the lighting/mood/atmosphere in your work.
Yes, it is indeed a reference to the giant spider that was the mother of all of the spiders from the Hobbit and LOTR.
Ungoliant is an elvish word that means “Devourer of Light”. She got that name after she and Melkor attacked the Elves before they came to Middle Earth, and she ate one of the Silmarils in the process.
Compared to Shelob, Ungoliant was proportionately as big as you and I are compared to a normal sized spider.
Frankly, it is a username I came up with when I was like 19, and the “Childe” part of the name is a reference to the fact that I used to play Vampire: the Masquerade. But, I have a lot of people following my blog now, and it is as good a username as any.
I like in the Fellowship of the Rings where they are standing outside the big ass door with the riddle “Speak friend and enter” thing.
And then they’re like, what’s friend in elvish and Legolas just stands there and says nothing.
a-terror-of-shadow-and-flame
Frodo: *looks at Gandalf*
Everyone else: *looks at Legolas*
Legolas: [internally] fuck you, in Eregion they spoke a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT kind of elvish, I grew up with like ten different dialects of silvan, this word is pronounced differently in every one of them, this sindarin and my sindarin probably wouldn’t even be a little bit compatible, who fucking knows the door might want it in Quenya, you know what it’s probably in Khuzdul, that’s the kind of language you’d want a password to be in, the one nobody knows, fuck they’re all looking at me I don’t know this there are dozens of different languages spoken by elves you stupid fucks
If the Silmarillion is ever adapted, I want it done as a series of comic books, like the Dark Tower. One writer, with a different artist for each of the stories in the Silmarillion. Some of the stories would be 6-8 issue miniseries. Some would be one shots. The key would be to make it an anthology series.
For those of you who do not know what "the Silmarillion" is, it is the history of Middle Earth from the perspective of the Elves. It covers about 5-6,000 years.
By comparison, "the Lord of the Rings" takes place over a period of about 9 months.
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