Customer Reviews

The Lord of the Rings Sketchbook

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Length:: 0:21 Mins

The description from the book jacket is rather accurate and I'll quote it here:

-- Start quote --
In The Lord of the Rings Sketchbook Alan Lee reveals in pictures and in words how he created the beautiful watercolour paintings for the special centenary edition of The Lord of the Rings. These images would prove so powerful and evocative that they would eventually define the look of Peter Jackson's movie trilogy and would earn him a coveted Academy Award.

The book is filled with over 150 of his sketches and early conceptual pieces to show how the project progressed from idea to finished art. It also contains a selection of colour paintings reproduced in full-page glory, together with numerous examples of previously unseen conceptual art produced for the films and many new works drawn specially for this book.

The Lord of the Rings Sketchbook provides a fascinating insight into the imagination of the ma who painted Tolkien's vision, firstly onto the page and then in three dimensions on the cinema screen. It will also be of interest to many of the 100,000 people who have bought the illustrated The Lord of the Rings as well as for budding artists interested in unlocking the secrets of book illustration.
-- end quote --

Full coloured paintings are few actually. But this book has an amazing collection of pencil sketches. The chapters are sorted by places that appear in the book, in chronological order.

With the author's comments, it makes this book sort of a "Making of" book together with it being an "Art of" book. So that's really a plus.

It should interest concept and fantasy artists. Oh, and also Lord of the Rings fans.

There are more pictures on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.

As soon as I saw this book I knew it would be great. And it was! I can't believe how talented Alan Lee is! He is a great artist and one of my chief influences. He is one of the greatest Tolkein artists and really knows what he's doing. Both his sketches and his brushwork are incredible. I hope he can do more art for J.R.R. Tolkeins legendary world. I first was introduced to his art when I bought the illustrated editon of The Hobbit and Lord of The Rings and since then I've been a fan and I've bought many other books with his art in them.

With this book you go into the artistic mind of this awesome artist and see how he sees Middle Earth. You'll see his version of Tom Bombadil, The Barrow Wight, Bree, Wethertop, The Balrog and countless other things from the books he illustrated and the movie sets he designed.

This book is a great buy! Its got over 150 drawings and his own notes. If you buy it I hope enjoy it as much as I did. I also recomend checking out John Howe, Ted Nasmith and Rob Alexander.

As an Illustrator I highly recommend this book. If you're into illustrating and you're into the Lord of the Rings you cannot go wrong with Alan Lee's LOTR sketchbook. It's beautiful, it's hard-cover, and it's extremely affordable. It even comes with a string bookmark. The only thing I actually didn't enjoy much was the text, the font is pure black yet his sketches are often very light, I wish maybe he'd have compiled the text at the beginning of the book or just at the start of each chapter because it takes away from his artwork.