Relevance Post: Artistry

For my relevance post, I'd like to talk about Tolkien's artwork and how it has impacted my life personally.

Growing up I often stayed with my grandmother when my parents were at work. For the most part, I was confined to her living room. In her living room, there was a pile of toys tucked away in the corner that she kept for me to play with, right underneath one of her bookshelves. If I got bored playing with my toys I would read the spines of the books and try to make sense of them (a lot of them I didn't understand because they weren't in English, but I tried my best). One of the spines I could read was The Hobbit, which I decided to pull out one day out of curiosity. My grandmother had a relatively old version of the book, the one with Tolkien's illustration of the barrels flowing down the forest river with the Dwarves inside them. For some reason, that image stuck with me, and when I finally grew up enough to actually read The Hobbit, it was my grandmother's copy that I picked up. When I read other works by Tolkien, I immersed myself fully in his illustrations, his map making, and his calligraphy. When I took art classes in school, much of my art would end up being related to Tolkien or I would emanate his style in one way or another.

To this day my art still carries semblances of his influences. In the way I draw lines, in the materials I use, and sometimes in my subject matter. His art helped shape me as an artist while his novels helped shape me as a reader and lifelong enthusiast and for that, I am eternally grateful.

-Varda*