orkishereemily

[orkishereemily]

i really really don't want this to be some sort of petty rant account (i've done too much already, i'm still repenting), but i have this little pet peeve that i'm just dying to vent about

so, you might've seen this picture before!

a watercolour sketch made by tolkien himself

usually said to be how sauron is 'supposed' to look (and occasionally accompanied with a comment about it looking bad or tolkien 'not being an artist' which is mean :/)

but it's always missing the context!!

for one thing, this really shouldn't be seen as "what sauron looks like" this is that bit at the very end where sauron is killed and he takes the form of a giant shadow for a moment before disappearing we don't really know what sauron looked like in his normal form (just big and scary basically), but it wouldn't be this!

also, this is basically just a doodle! like, that's why there's another arm randomly placed below it! it's just him testing out an idea, not a finished piece or anything like that

in fact, he was testing out this idea so he could do a better final copy later!

this was tolkien's concept for the cover of ROTK and at the top right, you can see a MUCH better version of the spooky sauron shadow there were definitely things tolkien struggled with drawing (people mostly, and perspective/scale are usually pretty wonky) but i think this picture of sauron is actually pretty effectively sinister! he doesn't get enough credit as an artist, he had a really charming style and i really love a lot of his pieces

unfortunately they couldn't include sauron on the finished cover because it wouldn't have printed legibly (it is already kinda hard to see just in the concept) honestly too bad, i do think the rest of the cover is kinda. mmm. i have never been able to figure out what those two feathery things on the sides are supposed to be

so yeah, to sum up: that watercolour sketch really isn't "what sauron really looked like" or anything like that, AND there's a much cooler version of that picture out there anyway

[orkishereemily]

i've been rewatching the hobbit movies since i haven't actually seen them properly since they came out so i just started the desolation of smaug, and i was reminded of this message apparently written in the black speech

i always assumed it was just some random scrawling to look spooky but i decided to look into it, turns out it's actually a fully developed writing system!

was designed by david reeve, who did all the calligraphy and a lot of the art for the movies (and even ROP apparently)

there's even some other samples of it on props that were made for goblin-town!

it's very cool, i never knew about this before :3

[orkishereemily]

Durin's Bane, the Balrog of Moria

been trying to draw this nerd for years, finally managed to do something passable

hair that's on fire, man fire in general ughhhh

he's missing the shadow mostly because i would not be able to draw it, but also because it kinda runs counterproductively to me trying to show what he looks like just turn your screen brightness wayyy down if you want to know what he'd look like with it

i have like one way of drawing scary guys and it's always sharp-cheekbones with sunken eyesockets making this exact frowny face bonus points if they have long black hair

[orkishereemily]

Uruk-hai (Tolktober, 16), 2023, encre de Chine sur papier, 21,5 x 14 cm

[orkishereemily]

These are all very old, but they still hold up pretty well, unlike most of my older stuff

The Witch-King, Durin (maybe VI), and a captain of Isengard

The WK's helmet/crown is sort of based off Tolkien's sketch of the crown of Gondor and some designs I drew up for some regular Gondorian helms He's dressed in a full-body outfit that's held to his body by leather straps, it's hard to make well-fitting clothes for him since his measurements are a biiiiit tricky to take Neither of his hands are good, his left especially (which is why it's subtly cropped out of frame), otherwise there's nothing here that I think is tooo clumsy Designwise there's not much I'd change, I'd just remove the spike from his helmet (I remembered immediately after I drew it that he wears his hood over it), add some more weapons and stuff to his belt, and decorate his armour a bit (i have a different design for him as the ruler of angmar that's much fancier and i reeeeeally wanna draw that again now, so stay tuned for that)

Durin's crown is based on the design on the West-gate of Moria, just fancied up a bit His shield is based on one from Tolkien's drawing of Smaug, but he really deserves a prettier one :P I thought a hammer would be a cool, it's ceremonial and made of gold, silver, and pearl I think his design and the drawing holds up basically to how I'd do it today, though the mail's a little too dark (oh and I wouldn't give him the chausses, since I mostly tie those to Dáin and the dwarves of the Iron Hills)

The Uruk is still really really good from every aspect to me The feathers in his helmet mark him as a captain, worn in a plume like Men wear them, and they're eagle feathers that he bullied out of some mountain Orcs for some extra flair The cape is just for decoration, unlike in Mordor where it denotes status Same goes for the fur over his shoulders He could use a shield and some other equipment I guess, but otherwise there's not really anything I'd change about him!!

(yeah pretty much every single one of my older drawings is in the same pose from the exact same angle, it was a hard habit to break XP)

[orkishereemily]

This is a little doodle of my brother/a troll I did a couple years ago, still one of my favorites :D

Probably one of the three from The Hobbit Maybe Bert, he strikes me as the surliest

So I think everyone basically knows what Trolls are supposed to look like, I just have a couple specific features I imagine them with ^^ They start out with smooth, green scales all over their body that grow and roughen as they age until they're more like the scales on a crocodile's back They also slowly start to turn greyer and stonier as they're exposed to light over time (only direct light from the sun actually turns them into stone though) Their heads are covered in sparse, moss-like hair on their scalps and sometimes their chins, it usually doesn't grow very long Their eyes are just black, though they reflect light a bit in the darkness (like cats), and glow red when they're angry (stole this from the Drúedain, use it for a lot of my evil designs) The Hobbit's pretty clear that they wear proper clothes instead of just, like, loincloths or something like that, so that's how I imagine them They usually find a small group of Orcs they can bully into fashioning clothes for them, which tend to be made quickly and crudely, and they don't care to change into a new set until they've worn them completely to shreds The Hobbit also mentions they wear "stony boots" but. I don't know what that is, so What I give them is just simple leather thingies tied tightly around their legs (has to keep from slipping off since they don't have toes)

I love trolls, they're super endearing to me <3 I always like to imagine they're not all bad (Tolkien did write a very cute poem about a nice troll, it's one of my favorites)

[orkishereemily]

Gothmog, the Lord of Balrogs

Just a little sketch I did in class ^^

This was very very recent and it's probably the best LotR thing I've drawn so far

So I think it goes without saying that my idea of Balrogs is very different from the usual hahaha I see them as very very human, the only key physical differences being their grey skin, their burning yellow eyes, and their size (Gothmog's the largest, probably around 8 feet tall) Obviously he'd normally be shrouded in darkness and be covered in flames, but. I'm not that good at drawing so :\ They wear armour because, yknow, why wouldn't they I don't usually go super elaborate with armour designs because. I'm not that creative and it's hard haha. But I also just think of evil stuff being more "boring." Like, they're singlemindedly focused on conquest and destruction, so they focus on efficiency over looking nice. And the Balrogs are sort of the epitome of mindless slaughter and destruction, so I think of them as dressing for pure function over looks I've never drawn any of the other Balrogs, but they'd have their hair free (and of course they'd have different faces like people do) Otherwise they're not super distinguishable from one another

Personality-wise, he's what you'd expect from his appearance and from the high-captain of Angband He's cruel and incredibly brutal, oversees the torture of special prisoners, is totally devoted to Morgoth, etc He's not a nice guy

[orkishereemily]

Intro

Hiya, I'm Emily (she/her)! This is just a little sideblog for my LotR stuff <3

I probably won't be posting all that often because I'm not as into Tolkien as I used to be (the fandom being flooded with racist people when the amazon show started coming out really soured my interest XP), but I thought it'd be worth having around ^^

I'm mostly into the books, not the movies or anything else all that much, and my drawings are always how I envision stuff based on how Tolkien describes it

My favorite thing in LotR has always been the Orcs, if I post any long text posts here it'll probably be about them :3

I lean more towards evil stuff so I'm also really into Balrogs, Trolls, etc, but I swing back around to good things too from time to time

I've read The Hobbit, LotR, The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and some other stuff I started HoME ages ago but didn't get very far, and then my interest in the series got killed so I probably won't pick it up again any time soon :(

Non-Tolkien stuff I've seen are the Peter Jackson movies (LotR countless times, the Hobbit trilogy only once), season 1 of RoP, and I've played Lego LotR and Shadow of War (for the Orcs, I didn't really like anything else about it)

(Oh and if you want the best Tolkien experience outside the books, go play the LotR Minecraft mod, it's really really great)

So yeah, that's all there is about me, I hope my posts are good ^^