Aside from being a philologist, and an amazing author, J.R.R. Tolkien was also an artist. Albeit, not necessarily his forte. Tolkien created vast amounts of sketches and paintings associated with his literary world. This includes the actual cover art of his novels, as well many others that illustrates important events in his stories. Many of them are actually really nice. Even so, and although not directly related to the art of The Hobbit; I’m considering on getting an iconic Tolkien painting tattooed on my body.

This book has all of the sketches and paintings made by J.R.R. Tolkien himself that are associated with The Hobbit. The 75th version of The Hobbit that I read included some of the pictures presented in this book. This book includes those drawings as well as many others, and goes into detail on the history of the sketches/paintings. The art is presented in chronological order as the events happened in The Hobbit.

To me the most amusing part in reading art book was learning that Tolkien visioned the entrance to the Elvenking’s halls to be almost exactly identical to those of Finrod Felagund’s Nargothrond realm in The Silmarillion.