Wow! The last one of Aragorn is particularly amazing.

Have you done any of Gandalf?

Hmmmm ....


These pictures bear a resemblence to the actors as they attempted to portray the roles of the characters from the books!

So I would not say that the images as presented are necessarily exclusive of the characters and only representative of the actors/actresses.

I do see some variation in several cases.  And if you ever saw a picture of the actors themselves in their day-to-day garb and whatnot, they do not generally look exactly like the characters they were portraying in LOTR.

I'm sure that the actor/actress choices and choices of dress and style were chosen in order to represent the characters more so than the actors.

WELL unless someone has actually seen the characters somewhere (hahaha) then I'd say that this attempt at representation is no worse than any other... with one exception (on certain levels) ...

I think any representational artform of material from the books could impact the collective imagination about the images of the characters.  I guess the only form that may be more authoritative than any of the others would be J.R.R.T.'s own renditions.

On the plus side if these paintings were made simply to represent the artists own image of how the characters in the books should look then most people would say 'Who are these people meant to be?'. Plus paintings of random people, while they may look realistic unto themselves, do not provide the comparison these paintings do. People can view these and say 'Wow that really is like Legolas, Aragorn etc' and thereby might appreciate the artist more.

Question Bear: does the above mean that you do not judge the films in any measure with respect to faithfulness to the source?

Bear, regarding what you said in your post before Galin's. I don't judge the paintings posted in this thread as bad because of being intrinsically worthless. That said, I appreciate the use of colour, perspective and general impression of each of them. Especially the use of yellow in the last painting of Aragorn, to express the way light falls on his hair, is remarkable and worthy of praise, because it shows that the artist sensed the depth in his composition. However I condemn the lack of originality in choosing the characters themselves - because they are, I repeat, not the characters, but the actors with the make up which turned them in characters.

You can believe those are Aragorn, Eowyn, Arwen, etc. if you 'suspend disbelief' - this is what I did when watching the films, and quite involuntarily. To me Liv Tyler was Arwen in the film; but I must make a mental effort to see her as Arwen in that picture.

I never said the compositions were not good in themselves - but I do not judge them in themselves, period. I judge them with an eye on the artist's creativity. He has the books as his guide: all he has to do is let his inner eye portray the characters, and then put that image on canvas. But! he does not do this - it's as if saying that Peter Jackson's decision (or whoever it was that made the casting) is the canon for how the characters must look.

If the artist made two paintings of Aragorn, putting forth the talent he so clearly is capable of, and one image shows his Aragorn, and the other shows Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn, and I were asked to choose one to buy, I'd choose the first one.

I would do so because I could involuntarily suspend disbelief and think that the unknown face is Aragorn in the painting, while I could not do so with the one showing the actor. To paint an actor demands the viewer to see that as the actor more than as the character portrayed.

Bear, we do not disagree - or if we do, it is in no more than the choice of words used to express what in my opinion is a similar view held by both of us. Judge everything for its own sake - I totally agree with you here, though I chose to express my feelings about a different matter than this statement of yours.

Regarding my 'involuntary' suspension of disbelief, which you say (noted: with a smile) may be a clinical problem: perhaps my command of English just was not enough to let my thoughts transpire without possibility of interpretation. It is of course conscious, always. But sometimes it is easier to do, and some other times it is more difficult, or even impossible.

When I read Tolkien's 'Smith of Wootton Major' - possibly my favourite short story by Tolkien - I had no problem to feel really involved in what was told. I never said to myself: 'yes, but where does the character go to get to Faerie?' because if I had asked myself regarding this issue, the magic of the story would have been lost. It would have fallen into the risible. On the other hand, I happened to ask myself such questions in other circumstances. If there is a 'suspension of disbelief meter', then seeing actors as characters in films is high on the scale (it's easy for me to imagine them as characters); seeing them in paintings is no longer that easy.

That of course is a personal trait of the individual; whatever anyone else says, however well argumented, the subjectivity of likes and dislikes can hardly be influenced by it.

Regarding the merits of the pictures as pictures: that was never a point of debate between us: I appreciate them just as much as you do.

-- Edited by John Wain on Saturday 5th of February 2011 09:22:38 PM

I guess it is true that if you were to look at "google images" for various LOTR characters you would find that much of the artwork is highly influenced by scenes from the movie.

I guess it doesn't make me "sad" because to me there is a basic unreality to any sort of image of such characters.  I don't feel more convinced when I perceive such characters with my own inner eye any more so than when I look at some other image.

Before the movies there were other images available but perhaps the difference may be in the level of advertising, marketing, and circulation of such images.

Galin,
Just two small things ...

1.) I don't want to judge people ... I fail sometimes and I do express an opinion ... but especially here ...  I may not agree with anothers opinion ... but I hope that is not a judgement of them.

2.) The criteria for judging different art forms changes from artform to artform ... the apple is firm, red or green, tart or sweet.  An orange is juicy, has lots of pith, and meaty sections.
Both apples and oranges have color, grow on trees, and are eaten by human beings.
But they should each be judged by their own criteria ...
I would be a little hesitant if my orange was red.

And last ... I think we will stumble over this again and again ...
Which is OK by me.
I love reading your different perspectives ... they really have enriched my enjoyment of things Tolkien.
I still stand by;
Judge the books as books.
Judge the films as films.
Judge the artwork as artwork.

with a smile,
Bear

Several months ago, when I googled LOTR images, I saw several of these that looked similar especially the 2nd and the 5th one. No mistaking there. Did our friend have them online, without a canceling the right click? If people put their work online and don't disable the copy function or at least put a © symbol on it, one must assume that they are making it available to all and sundry, to share their work. Or at least put their name and url with it.

I am not saying that he actually is doing anything wrong, but the proof is not there. Artists should copyright their art. When my Poem got Published, I made sure that everybody who looked at it in any of the Fan Art threads I put it in, like I did here at Tolkien Forums, that my poem
"Love's First Song" © was copyrighted. I guess I should try to publish my other work or at least pay to have it ©ed

Doing this proofs that you care about your work and that nobody can take it away from you and say that it is theirs. You can take somebody to court for Copyright infringement, but in order to do that, it needs the © symbol, which means that you registered it with the Copyright Office.

Just a thought.

I have no problem with your statement in general Bear, but to take the fruitful example...

'The criteria for judging different art forms changes from artform to artform ... the apple is firm, red or green, tart or sweet. An orange is juicy, has lots of pith, and meaty sections. Both apples and oranges have color, grow on trees, and are eaten by human beings. But they should each be judged by their own criteria ... I would be a little hesitant if my orange was red.'

OK but to stay with the comparison: your 'redness' is impossible in an orange for example, so the inability to successfully translate redness from apples to oranges is an all agreed upon given (scientific attemps aside obviously!). As would be other attributes of an apple that we simply don't naturally have in an orange; even though there is some measure of commonality too, like growing on trees for instance.

But what does 'redness' equate with in the actual application from book to film? Is it impossible to present characters or sequences of events as the author presented them? Surely not impossible, and granted 'impossible' is a rather sweeping characterization -- although again such a discussion will be opinion laden in any event (also taking into account the actor or director's take on lines or actions).


For example, can film translate, or can it not, Frodo as an exceptional Hobbit, even wounded, who stands up to Wraiths at the ford? In a sense, I'm not sure why we can't have a red orange here (if 'redness' here doesn't equate with the 'impossible' of course); and if something can't work on film then why not? Or do we simply have a choice by the filmmakers rather -- similar (only in that it was a choice) to Frazetta choosing to make Eowyn half-naked for his own reasons.


This doesn't mean I want or demand everything from the books, but on the other hand this is only one example of very many. As I say, this matter is complicated. Jackson's team has stated their cinematic concerns as to why they chose Arwen to appear at the ford in the first place. Basically the reason was: too many introductions at this point, so why not introduce a character that was going to have relevance to the rest of the film.

In general I would say that that's not an unreasonable cinematic consideration, and that an author at least arguably has 'more room' so to speak, in this regard -- and also the possible 'confusion' of non-book readers in theaters could become a consideration at least. But let's note a few things about the filmmaker's reason why this 'orange' wasn't allowed a better chance to be more red (this connects to my 'black Snowmane' point earlier):

A) this change really connects to another change already instituted by the Jackson team: making Arwen a major character in the first place. This too is only an arguable necessity, but even if I have no huge problems with it in theory (I don't actually), it's still a change based on a change

B) Legolas could have been used

C) this reason does not speak to the way in which the movie makers chose to introduce Arwen (sword under Aragorn's neck and so on), nor why she 'needed' to ride with Frodo and herself stand up to the Wraiths. This too was seemingly based (at least in part) on the decision to make Frodo so out of it from his wound that he couldn't make the stand Tolkien gave him


And so the alterations and changes that are said to be instituted because film is film and a different medium than books are not only complicated, but are also open to questioning. What is it about film that made the introduction of 'Asfaloth and rider' as in the books (if Arwen is accepted as replacing Glorfindel in the first place) so unworkable in film?

Nothing I would say, in fact I would argue that the sound of an approaching horse here -- which would at first seem like a Black Rider to be happily revealed as help -- was the far better choice cinematically. And as it happens to be 'more faithful' to the source in my opinion, here's another arguable red orange.


Here I've drawn a comparison to the book -- since the book provided the better (to me) filmic experience -- am I unfairly judging the film by book standards here? I don't think so.

'The canons of narrative art in any medium cannot be wholly different; and the failure of poor films is often precisely in exaggeration, and in the intrusion of unwarranted matter owing to not perceiving where the core of the original lies.' JRRT, letter 210

edit: when I was writing that I missed some posts in between!

-- Edited by Galin on Sunday 6th of February 2011 08:27:41 PM

Hey!

Something just occurred to me whilst I was inspired to go and draw up my own imagined image of the epic scene of Eowyn's ...

Sometimes art is not meant LITERALLY ... so maybe that scantily clad Eowyn was not going for realism but was rather making some sort of statement about an opinion regarding women who go into battle alongside men ... or perhaps there was a depiction of the kinds of things that the Naz was mistakenly thinking ...

Art can get tricky that way sometimes.  This can make it hard to stricktly judge by the most literal of standards and hard to compare in general at times.  I think this is one good reason why it is often said that art should be judged as art and literature as literature etc. etc. etc.


-- Edited by Meimei on Sunday 6th of February 2011 07:14:27 PM

I went on the US Copyright Website. They want $35 for the most basic of Copyrights. I am not sure if that would be per poem, or per bookl, or booklet in my case.