Illustrated Blog Posts

Glory and trumpets, as Sam Gamgee was wont to say! I am so deeply honored to have been chosen to design the 2026 logo for The Tolkien Society's Oxonmoot - an annual event that is cherished around the world. The artwork will be available on the famous Oxonmoot t-shirts attendees love to sport, as well as on other merchandise. You'll be asked if you'd like to order shirts when you register for the event here and there is further information on the event FAQ page here under "Ot

“The one small garden of a free gardener was all his need and due, not a garden swollen to a realm; his own hands to use, not the hands of others to command.” - The Return of the King, Book 6, Chapter 1: The Tower of Cirith Ungol The sense of guarding is philologically rooted in the word "garden" and Sam's humble wishes not only protect him from the self-aggrandizing lies of the Ring, but are met with the happy fairy-tale ending reward of what may be the best garden in all th

The wistful part of my heart is always hoping to see a new Bree arise in our present Age and to go live there, where the Little Folk and Big Folk are good neighbors once more. There would be Men close enough to nature that they take their surnames from it, and Hobbits with enough of the green world all about the community to feel at home. But, while I continue to wait to accidentally find myself the lucky guest at some modern Prancing Pony Inn, I thought it might be encouragi

Is there any setting more inviting of enjoyment than a country walk? Birds and frogs harmonize when noisiness backs away. Wildflowers of infinite delicacy float in a mauve cloud of Yorkshire fog grass. There are fragrant streams, nests in shady concealment, and shafts of light alive with tiny, gilded beings. The observant hobbit authors we know best knew all such things and more. Some disgruntled modern readers are wont to say that hobbit tales contain too much description of

What would late Third-Age hobbits have thought of Yavanna Kementári, and what would she have thought of them? It's harvest time in the Green Hill Country, and you're seeing my thought of how the Little Folk might have imagined this august servant of the One. Of course, they are not actually seeing one of the Valar kneeling amidst their wheat fields, orchards, and smials any more than most of us expect to encounter a personification of Mother Nature in our gardens. Yet, at lea

Do you ever look at place names on J.R.R. Tolkien's beautiful maps and wish you could just stand in them for a minute and see the lay of the land and experience the feeling of being there? Woodhall is just such a spot for me, and I hoped that in painting this landscape, I could share a view with others to help us better picture the place. In my forthcoming book, A Shire Walking-Party , I'll hope to further explore with you the topic of hobbit architectural variations, and her

"'Hobbits!' he thought. 'Well, what next? I have heard of strange doings in this land, but I have seldom heard of a hobbit sleeping out of doors under a tree. Three of them! There's something mighty queer behind this.' He was quite right, but he never found out any more about it." - The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, Chapter 3: "Three is Company" Once the four Fellowship hobbits pass through the Brandybucks' Old Forest gate, they journey from marvel to marvel - but I do not

Just a few generations ago, it was not uncommon for people to display ornamental busts of historic figures they found inspiring. With this pair of paintings which I've created in hopes of offering them as devotional works for the Lenten and Easter Seasons, it's my thought that those who have been inspired by the faith lives of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis might have access to these images as a source of encouragement. I know of no photographs of either man at his church, yet

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