J.R.R. Tolkien was a talented artist as well as a writer, and throughout his life he produced dozens of drawings and paintings, many of which display the same sense of wonder and delight that make his books so enjoyable. In the 1970s a collection of his finished work dealing with Middle-earth was published as Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien. Wayne G.Hammond and Christina Scull, who are among the most authoritative of Tolkien scholars, have already edited J.R.R. Tolkien Artist and Illustrator, which contains a wide range of his work from throughout his life; as well as The Art of The Hobbit, concentrating on the paintings and drawings he produced for his first book. The Art of the Lord of the Rings is a beautiful companion to these earlier publications and is especially valuable in that it contains many heretofore unpublished sketches and drawings that allow us to better understand how Tolkien came to create his best loved tale. In his lifetime, some of his artworks were included in his novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings; others were used on the covers of different editions of these books. Posthumously, collections of his artworks have been published, and academics have begun to evaluate him as an artist as well as an author. Holmes, John R. (2013) [2007]. "Art and Illustrations by Tolkien". In Drout, Michael D. C. (ed.). J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia. Routledge. pp.27–32. ISBN 978-0-415-86511-1.

So as a few examples of what you will find- how Tolkien was able to create the Elvish script for the inscription on the One Ring. I especially enjoyed the various maps of the Shire or Mordor and the various stages of the world-building that eventually developed into the fully fleshed-out epic that is LOTR. This book is great for LOTR fans (specifically of the books, I don't think fans of the movies alone would get a lot from it), but may be of minor interest only if you don't appreciate the LOTR. Calling this artwork is misleading, because much of it clearly wasn't intended to be artwork and was closer to sketches (often very rough sketches) to help Tolkien visualize what he was writing. I still think the book is very good, but people should look up a few of the pictures from the book online before buying it so they know what they are getting. Huttar, Charles A. (1975). "Hell and the City: Tolkien and the Traditions of Western Literature". In Lobdell, Jared (ed.). A Tolkien Compass. Open Court. pp.121–122. ISBN 978-0875483030. The Annotated Hobbit · The History of The Hobbit · The Nature of Middle-earth · The Fall of NúmenorTolkien, J. R. R. (1954a). The Fellowship of the Ring. The Lord of the Rings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. OCLC 9552942. While this is not a book that would appeal to a casual fan of the work-as the illustrations are mostly sketches and the information is fascinating to those who are huge fans of the work. Thus if you ever wished to know things like how the maps of the world, how he developed Helm's Deep, the artistic styles he wanted for Minas Tirith, Rohan, Gondor, etc.

Overall, what The Art of The Lord of the Rings conveys is a sense of a master creator at work. We get to see some of the tensions Tolkien experienced. He had a concept of the perfect ideal that he wanted to create; but he also felt the limitations of deadlines, money, publisher’s demands, his other jobs and family duties, and his own perceived limitations, particularly in the artwork. It’s interesting to see how often his publisher would request something from him, and he would first respond, “No no, I have neither time nor inclination to work on that right now”; but then you can see how the idea worked into his mind, and he would send another response, saying, “Ok, I think this should be done, and I will see what I can do by a certain date, but no promises.” There was always a higher standard, a more perfect realization of his idea, just out of his reach, and his creative process moved not in a smooth line toward that, but in fits and starts, periods of intense, productive work, and frustrating periods of no work at all. I’m sure in his mind this also fit into his theology—that there is a perfect Creator, and we are but “subcreators,” following after the perfect one as best we can. HarperCollins deputy publishing director Chris Smith told The Guardian, “Like many young readers, I was enthralled by his charming and evocative illustrations that accompanied The Hobbit. These paintings, particularly the now-iconic image that appears on its cover, have become as beloved as the story they accompany. Yet the author himself was characteristically modest, dismissive of the obvious and rare artistic talent he possessed despite having had no formal training. This modesty meant that relatively little else of his artwork was known of or seen during his lifetime, and generally only in scholarly books afterwards.” New Line Cinema Pictures / by J.R.R. Tolkien; foreword and notes by Christopher Tolkien. WorldCat. OCLC 937613591 . Retrieved 16 July 2020. McIlwaine, Catherine (2018). Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth. Bodleian Library. ISBN 978-1-851-24485-0. Froud, Brian; Lee, Alan (1979). David Larkin (ed.). Faeries. Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group. ISBN 9780553346343.A marvelous book containing artwork by Tolkien that he produced to aid him in the writing of the book, The Lord of the Rings. It contains sketches of scenes and landscapes and especially maps of Middle Earth that covers the story he was telling at various levels of detail. Tolkien, J. R. R. (1979). Tolkien, Christopher (ed.). Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien. Allen & Unwin. ISBN 978-0-04-741003-1. OCLC 5978089. Giving readers a more comprehensive understanding of J.R.R. Tolkien’s vision through these numerous drawings, as small and poorly-refined as they could sometimes be, despite not being initially conceived for publication anyway, this book remains an intricate and insightful collector’s item that fans of his work will inevitably want to discover. Even more fascinating is how he created his inscriptions in runes and Elvish script, serving as further evidence of his infinite creativity in that domain. Nevertheless, while not a quintessential read that adds to his legendarium, this art book does plenty in opening to readers new doors of appreciation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work and imagination.

bw): Richard Day, George James Hopkins / (c): Cedric Gibbons, E. Preston Ames, Edwin B. Willis, F. Keogh Gleason bw): Cedric Gibbons, Edward Carfagno, Edwin B. Willis, F. Keogh Gleason /(c): Paul Sheriff, Marcel VertèsMacLeod, Jeffrey J.; Smol, Anna (2017). "Visualizing the Word: Tolkien as Artist and Writer". Tolkien Studies. 14 (1): 115–131. doi: 10.1353/tks.2017.0009. S2CID 171923300.