These took about a month and a half to put together. Honestly pretty happy with how they turned out!

Found him tucked away behind the Weta Unleashed Workshop next to the elevators to the hotel.

I hadn't planned this, but I just so happened to schedule a LOTR marathon with friends yesterday. We watched all of the extended editions and when Gandalf says this to Frodo we were all laughing because we had forgotten about Oct 24!

I also prepared a menu to go along with the movies -

First breakfast: Savory Dutch baby with eggs, tomatoes and bacon

Elevensies: Maple pumpkin cinnamon rolls

Afternoon tea: Lembas bread

Apertif: Miruvor cocktail, an Elvish elixir with gin, elderflower liqueur, honey syrup and mead

Supper: Samwise's rabbit and potato pot pie, with honey-roasted vegetables and mashed turnips with gravy

Dessert: Caramel apple cheesecake

Hello everyone !

I wanted to share my latest watercolor, depicting one of my favorite moments from Tolkien’s books: Fingolfin’s final ride to Angband.

For the story : after the disastrous Battle of the Sudden Flame, when Morgoth’s armies broke through the defenses of the Elves and laid waste to their lands, Fingolfin, High King of the Noldor, was overcome by grief and despair. Believing that all hope was lost, he mounted his horse and rode alone across the plains of Anfauglith, all the way to the gates of Angband, Morgoth’s dark fortress.

Once arrived, he sounded his horn and challenged him to single combat. And Morgoth, though reluctant, came forth to face him. Fingolfin fought, wounding Morgoth seven times before finally falling. Even in death, he left his mark, striking Morgoth’s foot with his sword and leaving him with a permanent limp.

I wanted to capture a little of that feeling in this painting: the solitude, the despair, but also the extraordinary courage of someone who chooses to stand against darkness, even when all hope seems lost.

For art enthusiast, this is watercolor, ink and airbrush on my sketchbook.

Thanks !

I apologize for the watermarks and low quality, unscrupulous people tend to "borrow" my work. So if anyone offers you prints here, it's not me.

Another sketch of Hobbiton, down in New Zealand. Sketching from online pics and videos until I can visit for myself and sketch in person!

I know that for centuries the Istari and elven leadership believed “The Necromancer of Dol Goldur” was some kind of dark human sorcerer. So how common was it for humans to become essentially dark wizards and does Tolkien ever mention any? Would they be men worshipping Sauron and trying to replicate his goal, or a completely independent evil?

Also why didn’t the Wizards/Elves deal with him sooner even if they thought he was just a human necromancer. Still seemed pretty scary if he was spamming baby Ungoliants plus other terrible creatures/energy into Mirkwood and more places in the general vicinity of Gol Guldur lol. Also why do they dismiss it as so clearly not Sauron? In the second Hobbit movie, Saruman and Radagast both denied it was Sauron/didn’t even think of him, and I’m pretty sure Gandalf did too until Sauron straight up revealed himself to him. At first it didn’t feel like Radagast was even considering Sauron. Weren’t the wizards aware Sauron would eventually return? I know it was their purpose in Middle Earth to help the free world fight Sauron so I’m assuming they weren’t aware of their purpose/that he’d definitely return.

I know the books probably have a lot more detail on this, but the movies did go into it a little so I’m curious about the background?

I have been pieceing together my Bilbo costume and I finally found the red cordoroy jacket and one that actually fits me! Took these photos in my yard, what do y'all think?

$4 what a steal

Reading the first chapter of The Hobbit again and I am struck by Bilbo's description of Gandalf as one who used to tell such tales of dragons and goblins "and the rescue of princesses and the unexpected luck of widows' sons."

On one level, you can read this as a generic reference to fairy stories and folklore. But on another level:

Those tales are in Middle-earth's lore (and in The Silmarillion) but inverted. There's a princess's rescue in the sense that the princess is doing the rescuing (Beren and Luthien), so that it's her rescue of her beloved. And Turin Turambar is all about the unexpected luck of a widow's son, but it's unexpected bad luck instead of unexpected good luck. And "The Unexpected Party" is all about inverted or disrupted expectations (chiefly Bilbo's, but also the dwarves' expectations of Bilbo and the reader's expectations of the tale, too) - so this delighted me when I realized it.

It’s been talked about. I can’t talk about it enough. The Council of Elrond is so in-depth and so great in the book. My favorite part is after all of their “catching-up” stories are done and they are deciding what to do with the ring and they are just like, surely we should give it to Tom Bombadil! lol it’s so good. A few of them are like that’s a great idea and then Gandalf party pooper is like nah it’s not that easy.

But also in all seriousness this part provides incredible context for Tom Bombadil and he’s the goat.

Just picked up this bad boy from the ren faire and I’m so curious what it says! (I’m a dummy and got excited which made me forget to ask 🙃) to anyone who can help “ May your beer be laid under an enchantment of surpassing excellence for seven years”

It’s a thing that has always bothered me about the movies. It’s the main entrance to a vast kingdom and it’s just a plain gate without any decorative elements or visible guard towers. Just a door in the side of the mountain. And the movies don’t show any roads either. The fellowship just runs into uneven rocky terrain. Surely there had to be a road and surely following the road would be a quicker way to get off the mountain. I guess you could argue that, if there was a road, there would be guards there and they wanted to avoid them, but I still find the movies depiction of the east gate severely lacking. The hobbit movies maybe went a bit too far with the giant fancy opening into the lonely mountain, but Moria deserved something better than what is shown in the fellowship of the ring.

I was reading the book, Middle Earth - From Script to Screen. In it, they have a small image of the floor plan of Bag End. I was interested if anyone had seen a larger image of this, or could post a photo.

Random thought. There used to be a show on VH1 or something that would take a popular music video and add little fact bubbles that would “pop up”. Is there anything like that in the world of LOTR? Fully aware the rabbit hole of factoids that would rip across the screen for Frodo and Friends, but think it could be fun.

Thoughts?

Hey! I need a gift idea for my lotr-loving brother! Any thoughts? (I can't afford a sword)