After leaving college, Lee worked on magazines like Reader’s Digest and Women’s Own, before graduating to book covers. His best-remembered covers adorned Fontana ghost-story anthologies and Alan Garner novels, including The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. Lee, Grant Major and Dan Hennah earned the 2004 Academy Award for Best Art Direction for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, third in the film trilogy. [19] Among the numerous works by J. R. R. Tolkien that he has illustrated are the 1992 centenary edition of The Lord of the Rings, a 1999 edition of The Hobbit, the 2007 The Children of Húrin, the 2017 Beren and Lúthien, the 2018 The Fall of Gondolin, and the 2022 The Fall of Númenor. [2] [3] Lee worked as a conceptual designer on the films Legend, Erik the Viking, King Kong and the television mini-series Merlin. [5] The art book Faeries, produced in collaboration with Brian Froud, was the basis of a 1981 animated feature of the same name. [9] [10]

bw): Hal Pereira, Tambi Larsen, Samuel M. Comer, Arthur Krams / (c): William Flannery, Jo Mielziner, Robert Priestley How Tolkien wanted it to be received. Alan Lee's illustrations are really good, but I don't know if they add anything meaningful to the story. Also I've read that Tolkien wanted the trilogy to be read as one book, but it is uncomfortable to read large books on your lap or in the bed. Do the cool illustrations have an impact on the reader? Is the unique book thing relevant? Also, the 50th Edition has illustrations from Tolkien himself, which I don't see mentioned in the 2020's one (Maybe they are also included, I just don't know). Lee and Howe together drew the artwork of the cast at the end of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. For The Battle of the Five Armies, the sketching of the cast was split by nationality; John Howe drew Tauriel / Evangeline Lilly, as they are both Canadian. [ source?] Published artwork [ edit | edit source ] While he was working the graveyard shift, the entire faculty at Ealing College had departed and been replaced, and when he returned to finish his course he found a much staider atmosphere, heavy on graphic design and advertising. But reading The Lord of the Rings had reignited his childhood love of folklore and myth. “While everybody else was working on campaigns for Volvo, things like that, I was quietly sitting there illustrating ancient Irish folk tales,” he says. He’ll be glad to return to Devon – another of those gateways – where he looks out from his converted barn on to the untamed landscape of Dartmoor. He’s got another book to work on: a Hobbit sketchbook featuring his work on both films and books.Froud, Brian; Lee, Alan (1979). David Larkin (ed.). Faeries. Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group. ISBN 9780553346343. J.R.R. Tolkien (1937-present) · Pauline Baynes (1970-1989) · Roger Garland (1983-1991) · John Howe (1991-present) · Ted Nasmith (1990) · Geoff Taylor (1999) A sumptuous one-volume edition of Tolkien's classic masterpiece that is fully illustrated throughout in watercolour by the acclaimed and award-winning artist, Alan Lee, and housed in a special transparent slipcase.

The first one comes with The Hobbit, which I haven't read. I don't mind buying it separately though. The quality of the thing. Hardcover editions with good binding should last longer without deteriorating.

World Fantasy Award Winners and Nominees". World Fantasy Convention. Archived from the original on 22 September 2008.

bw): Cedric Gibbons, Malcolm F. Brown, Edwin B. Willis, F. Keogh Gleason / (c): Lyle R. Wheeler, John DeCuir, Walter M. Scott, Paul S. Fox Lee took a year out to work as a graveyard gardener, a job that bridged nature and civilisation in the way his Uxbridge childhood had, and also later fed into his Middle-earth work. “Walking through the gates of the cemetery was like stepping into a different world,” he recalls. “It was a portal to a strange realm of overgrown graves and trees.” With the epic trilogy now an acclaimed, award-winning and billion-dollar success, images of the characters and landscapes have become iconic to a whole new generation of readers. Much of the look of these movies is based on Alan Lee's paintings, giving this sumptuous new edition of Tolkien's great work new relevance for the ever-growing number of fans. Lee first encountered Tolkien aged 17 while at Ealing Art College. A fellow student gave him a copy of the first in the Lord of the Rings sequence, The Fellowship of the Ring. “I was just amazed,” he says. “I had grown up reading a lot of folklore and mythology, and this had elements that I recognised – elves and dwarves and dragons and magic rings. I just devoured it.” Lee’s original illustrations have been reproduced to the artist’s exacting standards, in a scale and quality never seen before, and have been augmented by several entirely new images, including enchanting endpapers depicting the One Ring long before it came into Frodo’s possession, three frontispieces, two revised versions of existing illustrations, a new image titled ‘The Grey Havens’ and an exclusive giclée print.Lee also created a series of illustrated books on fantasy, which came to the attention of Jane Johnson, an editor at Allen & Unwin and responsible for the Tolkien list. She showed his work to Christopher Tolkien, who agreed that Lee was the perfect choice to illustrate a lavish edition of The Lord of the Rings, to be released in 1992 to mark the centenary of Tolkien’s birth. Lee expressed interest in working on The Hobbit, and stated that "It would have to be a pretty special film to match the experience of working on The Lord of the Rings". [8] Lee was involved on work on The Hobbit, once again along with John Howe.