The Lord of the Rings Sketchbook (Alan Lee: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2005).
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The book is 192 pages, hardbound, 8" by 10", printed on good quality art paper, and lists for $30. It consists of about 150 of Lee's sketches, plus watercolors, and running commentary by Mr. Lee.
First, the text. There is a foreword by Ian McKellen, wherein he says: "The Lee sketchbook feels and looks like other artists' records of great journeys to foreign lands..." -- a good one-sentence summary of this book. It does indeed seem like an artist's record of a long journey, filled with his impressions of Middle-Earth's places and people (and creatures). Lee's short introduction follows, describing how he first encountered LOTR as a seventeen-year-old, and how that encounter led him into a career as an artist. He then proceeds from "Concerning Hobbits" (with a fine sketch of Bilbo Baggins at page 13) on through the tale to the Grey Havens.
Most of the text describes Lee's work with John Howe, Grant Major, Richard Taylor, and many others at Weta in developing the "look" of the movie. Lee talks often about the archetypal and mythic backgrounds of such figures as Gandalf, Galadriel, the Nazgul, Treebeard, Gollum. He writes about the difficulty of creating Hobbits that avoid "the traps of looking too childlike, comical, or grotesque;" his love of drawing trees; the ins-and-outs of drawings with a heavy architectural basis (e.g., Moria, Minas Tirith) and how with these he thinks he is "still trying to prove something" to the pedantic old man who taught him technical drawing; figures in action/battle scenes; and much more.
The artworks are nearly all pencil sketches, ranging from pages of studies for individuals and details (pp. 22-23, little drawings of furnishings and props for Bag-End; pp. 62-63, details of the Chamber of Marzabul; pp. 72-73, Elvish armor; pp. 92-93, developmental sketches of Meduseld, going through several different forms...) to large-scale "finished" pieces, including a dozen or so full-color reproductions of watercolors, many (all?) of them from his illustrations for the LOTR books -- my favorite of these last is the House of Tom Bombadil, p. 31, with a stunningly beautiful drawing of Goldberry among her water-lilies on the facing page. Among the watercolors, the breaching of the wall at Helm's Deep (p. 103) is a close second in my estimation. I prefer Mr. Lee's pencil drawings to his watercolors: they are more evocative, in my opinion. But the watercolors are still exquisite.
Many of the pencil drawings spread across the full two pages; many others are tiny. Some of the small drawings are obviously rough sketches; others are meticulous little gems. Sometimes, one sees a series of studies leading to a final result -- such as the watercolor of Gandalf and Frodo at Bag End. There is a sketch of a nude Gandalf, sitting in a chair and smoking his pipe, then he is in his clothing in the same pose. Then there are several studies for Frodo's facial expression as he looks at the Ring, fresh from the fireplace. Then finally, the watercolor.
Many of the drawings for the movies are detailed in part, and rough elsewhere -- he notes in the text that the press of time did not allow for finishing the drawings (he estimates that he did about 2,200 drawings) -- as soon as the necessary details were there, the drawings were whisked off to the miniature builders, sculptors, et. al., and Lee set to work on the next part of the project. He says there was an enormous rush in the early part of pre-production, because so much of the work of preparing sets, miniatures, and all the rest depended on the artistic concepts. One gets the impression that Lee found it very good to work with Grant Major and Richard Taylor, and that the interplay of ideas among them was highly fruitful for them all.
Mr. Lee spent six years on the movies. He says that he was one of the last people out of the production studios, still finishing up the design work for the Extended Edition packaging -- he mentions that the graphic design work was his first experience in that sort of endeavor. He also gained a thorough education in Photoshop and digital techniques -- another area that appears to have been new to him.
The book follows Prof. Tolkien, not Mr. Jackson -- thus, Mr. Lee includes the Old Forest, Old Man Willow, and the Barrowdowns as well as Bombadil and Goldberry. While much of the work looks very familiar after seeing the movies, there are other places where we see Mr. Lee's concepts, which differ from the final result of the movie.
Here are some of my favorites among the pencil drawings:
-- the title page: a panorama of Minas Morgul, overlooking the ruins of Osgiliath, with Minas Tirith standing defiant in the distance.
-- p. 26: a small drawing of Tom Bombadil
-- pp 88-89: Treebeard examining Merry and Pippin, and wondering what they are (with several little sketches of Treebeard and other Ents around the edges -- Lee mentions that he loves to combine several pictures into one)
-- p. 104: The sally of the Rohirrim out of Helm's Deep
-- p. 142: Forlong the Fat, Earl of Lossarnach, on horseback with his huge spear and mace, grim and prepared to fight to the death for Gondor.
-- pp. 150-151: Aragorn summoning the army of the dead. This drawing is (for me) far more powerful than the equivalent scenes in the movie, and shows the strength of pencil-drawing over the more concrete and "photographic" images of a movie. The pencil evokes the imagination, without supplying every detail.
-- pp. 160-161: the Witch King at the broken gate of Minas Tirith with Grond behind him, and Gandalf on Shadowfax waiting for him.
-- pp. 166-167: Eowyn standing over her uncle, sword outstretched, ready to take a swing at the Fell Beast as it descends on her, the Witch King titanic and menacing astride the beast, mace upraised.
-- pp. 178-179: a chaotic panorama of the Barad-Dur and the Plain of Gorgoroth. Down in the corner, a tiny speck, is Sam carrying Frodo up the slope of Mt. Doom.
-- pp. 184-185: The Grey Havens, looking much as they do in the movie, but here in pencil-sketch more of a place of mystery and wonder, ancient beyond reckoning. Sam is standing on the dock, watching the ship sail into the west.
My one unfulfilled wish: the inclusion of the characters from the ROTK credits. Two of them are here: Gandalf and Galadriel. I continue to think that Lee's drawings of the actors/characters in the closing credits are wonderfully evocative, in every case capturing some of what is special about that character, and that actor's portrayal. It would have been good to have all of them in the book.
I love this book! I would highly recommend it to any LOTR fan. Besides giving insight into the production of the movies, it is an artistic treasure in its own right. As with so many of the people involved with the LOTR movies, Alan Lee's part in it was a labor of love, a culmination of a lifetime of involvement with Middle-Earth. Surely, the devotion to Tolkien and LOTR on the part of so many of the people involved made these movies the unique treasure that they are; everyone brought their best to the project.