This is more of a gallery in conjunction with my four part introduction to John Howe. His art for "Lord of the Rings" is probably some of the best conceptual work for anything fantasy related. We all know that Peter Jackson hired him for his conceptual skills for the movie trilogy, even though I can't make out how much input he had int he final product. I always felt that the Armor and Weapon design was sub-par and pushed too far from anything based on historic Europe.
Anyways, the following three posts will be based on his Tolkien-based works. I'm doing The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and Lord Of The Rings. If i can get his material for "Unfinished Tales" and "History of Middle Earth" then I'll post that later. I Feel like this is his strongest work, simply because of the Biblical content "The Silmarillion" contains. Seriously, It talks about the creation of middle earth and the heros of the earlier eras and how The Third Age came to be. This includes sinking continents, the destruction of ancient cities, armies of dragons, etc. Heavy stuff, and it isn't an easy read AT ALL. It literally reads like a cross between a text book and the bible. Someday I'll grind through it (or hang out on the LOTR wiki). Anyways, the following images are BIG so you can fully enjoy John Howe's mastery of the brush and of the imagination. They also make great desktop images!
I have read The Silmarillion many times and it's my favorite Tolkien writing. John Howe authentically depicts how I imagined the events and characters would look.
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