Illustrated Blog Posts

I find it poignant to paint Frodo Baggins when he was still just a happy, simple hobbit, but passages in The Lord of the Rings that show what he loved reveal the good things he sacrificed so much to protect. Here, we see him about two years before his journey, preparing for his annual celebration of the birthday he shared with the long-absent Bilbo. Some in the Shire thought Bilbo had passed on, but Frodo seems to have felt in his heart that this wasn't so. It is a merry sce

J.R.R. Tolkien penned some truly epic romances, but for me, none is more moving than the one based in the bond between two sundered hobbits: Sam Gamgee and Rose Cotton. This tie is so strong that, on March 25th, Rose suddenly knows that Sam is coming back to her. The 'Epilogues' to The Lord of the Rings are rich in blink-and-you'll-miss-it treasures like this one, which demonstrates that hobbits could be foresighted where love was great. It's a very cold day near the end of

"And you were so special a gift to me, in a time of sorrow and mental suffering, and your love, opening at once almost as soon as you were born, foretold to me, as it were in spoken words, that I am consoled ever by the certainty that there is no end to this. Probable under God that we shall meet again, ‘in hale and in unity’, before very long, dearest, and certain that we have some special bond to last beyond this life..." Letter From J.R.R. to Christopher Tolkien, 1944. A g

Frodo Baggins was known for his "firm flowing script", and that is a detail I have come to see as remarkable. He returned from Mount Doom with a severely injured right hand. Unless he was left-handed, this means that Frodo wrote what we think of as The Lord of the Rings with a hand he must have had to retrain to write clearly. Consider the difficulty of supporting a quill without the prop of your third finger, and you will quickly realize that one of Frodo's final acts in Mi

You are cordially invited to the wedding of Peregrin of Great Smials to Diamond of Long Cleeve, and while I cannot paint the marriage ceremony (because J.R.R. Tolkien never described such a rite), I hope you will come dancing out of the wedding breakfast tent and into the arbor with this joyful crowd. Laburnums and lilies make the day splendid and are the flowers to which Bilbo compared Gandalf's fireworks. Merry and Sam are there with their wives and children, as are many il

There's a seat for you at The Ivy Bush and time to rest and chat. This is just a little painting - only 8" x 10" - but it captures something I love best about the life we read of in Tolkien's Third Age Shire. When the elders in your village are known by all as "gaffers" and "gammers", your community is recognizing binding societal ties. People we think of as cherished grandparents are intrinsically deserved of dignity and respect, and here, we see Hamfast Gamgee, "the Gaffer,

For anyone living amid societal strife, empire, or war, it may be a strenuous reach to imagine the great peace of the Days of the King at the beginning of the Fourth Age of Men. Can you sense the feeling of it if you try? If only for a moment? Some thousand years had passed in Eriador between the fall of the North Kingdom and the War of the Ring, yet a whisper of memory remained in the local saying that uncouth folk acted as if they hadn't heard of the king. The Rules by whic

Sometimes, simple pictures are about significant things. The year is S.R. 1430, nearly a decade after the departure of Bilbo and Frodo from Middle-earth, yet Bag End has never looked more floriferous. Thanks to Sam's tender care, the gardens nearest the smial have been greatly expanded. There is now a rose garden for Rose, a young fruit orchard, and a large vegetable garden to feed Sam's rapidly-growing family. The Party Field, however, has been left a wildflower meadow by tr

Before there was this: At the Green Dragon Inn, Bywater - Miriam Ellis There was this: Which came after this: None of which would have happened if it hadn't been for this: Gandalf is on his way to the Shire for a much-needed rest when he experiences one of the most pivotal more-than-chance meetings in Middle-earth history. He is at Bree, worrying about what Smaug might do to this place: And this place: Thorin Oakenshield is also thinking about Smaug when he encounters Gandalf

Who knows the age of the salt-scrubbed branches, worn shells, and smoothed bits of glass we pass by as we stroll along a seashore? By the time Frodo Baggins is setting out on his quest, J.R.R. Tolkien's "Aldarion and Erendis: The Mariner's Wife" has been drifting the waves of time for more than 5000 years. It has an unmistakable quality of antiquity, which makes its sharp edges all the more surprising. The tragedy at the eye of this stormy epic is the colossal failure of a ma

With the power of his pen, J.R.R. Tolkien seemed to take a special joy in letting us know that the eagles can come unexpectedly. It's not a promise, but the possibility conveys hope. The great eagles are the dragon-fighters of the First Age, the steeds of Maiar, the rescuers of hobbits. They whisk folk off to the higher places, giving that valuable eagle's eye view which suggests that life may not be quite what it seems from the vantage point of the Road. Manwë Sulimo - Miria

If only he had been given Bilbo's long years, J.R.R. Tolkien could have written an unforgettable female hobbit adventure, but at least we know that such quests took place. In the opening pages of The Hobbit , an excited Mr. Baggins exclaims, "Not the Wandering Wizard" - Miriam Ellis "Not the Gandalf who was responsible for so many quiet lads and lasses going off into the Blue for mad adventures? Anything from climbing trees to visiting elves - or sailing in ships, sailing to

A favorite theme I am gradually working to document in painting from Tolkien's legendarium surrounds hobbit development of the texts we have come to think of as The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion , and related volumes. The chance to envision Bilbo actually working on one of the red books that bore the title "Translations from the Elvish, by B.B." is something I find meaningful, given the love Big Folk everywhere have come to feel for these writings. Seated be

J.R.R. Tolkien's splendid illustration gives us an unforgettable view of The Hill from Hobbiton. Here, you can enjoy the same scene, in reverse as you walk down from Bag End into the village with Bilbo and Frodo on this fine afternoon. The chestnuts and elder are in flower, and there is so much to see. The opportunity to paint this special place helped me notice some interesting details I'd like to share with you in hopes that they will add to your sense of what it would be l

I am so grateful to the fine Tolkien scholars who continually share wise insights with all of us from their close readings of the texts. What I have to share today is a visual discovery - one which I was thrilled to come upon while doing research for this new portrait of J.R.R. and Edith Bratt Tolkien at home. I have a great interest in depicting both the works and life of the the Professor, out of my gratitude to him. This is 76 Sandfield Road in Oxford, which my research sh

If you've always longed to see 'A Shortcut to Mushrooms' from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring depicted, I hope this new painting is food for both the soul and for thought! I am so honored to welcome you to the brick-built farmhouse at Bamfurlong with Farmer Maggot, and Mrs. Maggot is already at work in her kitchen, preparing "a mighty dish of mushrooms and bacon" at sundown. The traveling hobbits have had quite a day by the time they get to this landmark spot in

When we look at the Shire on Tolkien's maps, the Southfarthing looks little-inhabited and most of what we know about this region is material rather than geographic. I've come to understand it as the source of two famous hobbit luxuries: wine and pipe-weed. The sun these crops prefer bespeaks a warmer clime than that of the other three farthings, leading to thoughts of leisure and enjoyment. I've envisioned a richer, redder soil here than the golden earth around Hobbiton or th

Imagine the charms of being a guest at Brandy Hall under Buck Hill. It's 1440 in the Shire Reckoning, nearly twenty years after Frodo's departure, and Meriadoc Brandybuck has been the Master of Brandy Hall and of Buckland for eight years. He is 58, and he and his wife, Estella Bolger (in the blue headscarf) have invited their cousins to come over from the Tookland for a summer visit. Pippin is 50, and we see him here with his wife Diamond (in the mustard-colored banyan) and t

Our picture of hobbits is so shaped by the Third Age that it can genuinely feel like an adventure to go back thousands of years before the War of the Ring in search of the Little Folk to find them hiding on the margins of some of the Great Tales. As Professor Tolkien explains: It is plain indeed that in spite of later estrangement Hobbits are relatives of ours: far nearer to us than Elves, or even than Dwarves. Of old they spoke the languages of Men, after their own fashion,

Shire gossip (quite incorrect) holds that the Tooks are a bit peculiar because an ancestor of the clan wed a fairy wife, but what can we say about the Brandybucks, who delve their own private entrance under the High Hay into the Old Forest so that they can go into the weird wood, even at night! Merry reveals that his family does this "when the fits takes them." The fit ? We are about as far as we can get here from Bilbo being afraid an adventure may make him late for dinner.