I love Tolkien's illustrations of his own work. The Guardian has published some new illustrations that were left out of the original Hobbit. More than 100 such illustrations are in a new book from Harper Collins:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/oct/24/tolkien-hobbit-drawings-published
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| The Lonely Mountain |
"It includes his conceptual sketches for the cover design, a couple of early versions of the maps and pages where he's experimenting with the runic forms, as well as a couple of manuscript pages," said Brawn. "It shows that Tolkien's creativity went beyond the writing, that it was a fully thought out conception. When he writes about the hobbit hole ["In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort"], he's designed it as well. And by doing that, it makes his description more vivid ... Tolkien was an accomplished amateur artist. He was a great admirer of Arthur Rackham and you can see a little bit of that style coming through."
