Over on Wraith Land, Thomas Kelley has just published the first part of an extended interview with noted Tolkien artist Jay Johnstone.
Jay’s artwork employs techniques from religious manuscripts, icon and fresco illustrations from the medieval period, and uses a variety of mediums — oils, watercolors, acrylics, egg tempera with gold powder and leaf. Striking detail and traditional techniques give the impression of artwork that could have been produced in the real Middle-earth.
Kelley delves into the goals underpinning Johnstone’s unique approach, and some of the insights into Tolkien’s worksthat Johnstone himself has gained out of it. If the interesection of Tolkien, art, psychology and spirituality is your thing, you’ll find this a very interesting read indeed.
An excerpt:
Johnstone dreams in Tolkien. And through him and his artwork we can perceive anew what it would mean to live in Middle-earth and to create art inside it. While Tolkien himself made “sub-creation” the purview of his own characters, from the creation of the Silmarils by Fëanor to the writing of the Red Book of Westmarch by the hobbits, Johnstone imagines what it would be like to be a painter inside Tolkien’s world, and then paints that world and its history. Reminiscent of the religious medieval icon paintings by Duccio di Buoninsegna and Fra Angelico, Johnstone’s paintings work not just like time portals but dream portals.
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Since early childhood, artist Jackson Robinson has always wanted to do something artistically inspired by The Lord of the Rings. Recently, he’s finally been able to turn that dream into reality with a wildly successful Kickstarter project launching a deck of The Lord of the Rings-themed playing cards featuring his own hand-drawn art.
Over 6,400 people have backed his The Fellowship of the Ring deck of luxury playing cards in just under a month. It’s now 25 times more successful than its initial goal.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring playing card deck, standard edition (front side and rear side of pack). Source: Kings Wild Project.
“I knew it would succeed just from the love of the IP and my followers, but I had NO idea it was going to be as successful as it has been,” Jackson told TheOneRing.net.
Robinson says that he’s worked as a professional illustrator for more than 20 years on big brand names and franchises ranging from Star Wars and Marvel Comics to Disney and Coca-Cola, but he’s always loved The Lord of the Rings. His favorite artists working in Tolkien’s milieu includes John Howe and Alen Lee, but he also loves the work of Donato Giancola and the woodcuts of Tolkien Society best artwork category award-winner Tomas Hijo.
“Like many others, the richness of the story and characters within Professor Tolkien’s work drew me in. I also always found it fascinating that I could never seem to be at the bottom of the well of creativity in any of his works or worlds,” Jackson says.
He says that the first significant piece of Tolkien artwork he made was a map of Middle-earth.
“I did this over 20 years ago, during my undergraduate years at the University of North Texas. The map still hangs in my office today.”
A virtual tour of Jackson’s home art design studio. We are officially envious of his collection of swords from Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings.
However, his interest in playing cards dates from around 2013. He says he only fell into it by accident while working in the videogame industry in Los Angeles.
“I did my first playing card Kickstarter to earn some extra money. It went viral, and I haven’t looked back. I was able to start designing playing cards full-time,” Jackson says. This was the basis for the company he founded — Kings Wild Project.
He says that ever since he started Kings Wild Project, a Lord of the Rings deck has been on his bucket list, and he immediately began researching the requirements for an official license from Middle-earth Enterprises. One of the prerequisites was that his business needed to have been operating in its industry sector for a minimum of five years.
Jackson says the day after Kings Wild Project reached the five-year-mark, he contacted Middle-earth Enterprise requesting to become a licensee to design The Lord of the Rings-themed playing card decks.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring playing card deck, legacy box edition. Source: Kings Wild Project.
He typically begins his creative process with a lot of reference gathering, looking for materials and art styles to draw inspiration from.
“Then I start sketching a character or court card. I usually start with the King of Spades. I will work on one court card or back design until I feel I ‘find it’, and continue the same process with the other characters and cards,” Jackson says. “So many things I deliberately DON’T plan… It is as if the story is being retold for the first time as each new character is revealed during the creative process.”
Frodo (left) and Samwise (right) cards from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring playing card deck. Source: Kings Wild Project.
Jackson says he typically doesn’t need to iterate designs very often.
“But I went through a massive restart with [the deck for] The Lord of the Rings. I had almost finished almost half the deck when I wanted to try something different. I ended up going with the new direction but, in the process, created two decks that have the same character lineup but are done in two very different styles.”
His favorite cards from his Fellowship deck are the Glorfindel card for the deck that’s now up on Kickstarter, and the Frodo card from his initial “scrapped” deck. He says he plans to return to that alternative deck at a later date.
Glorfindel (left) and Legolas (right) cards from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring playing card deck. Source: Kings Wild Project.
Plans don’t stop there. He also has a deck themed on The Two Towers tentatively expected to launch on Kickstarter in late Fall, and one for The Return of the King in early 2023. He hopes to produce a deck themed on The Hobbit in the Spring of 2023. He told TheOneRing.net that he was also recently granted a license to produce two-sided The Lord of the Rings jigsaw puzzles. Look out for a Fellowship of the Ring puzzle in time for the holiday season this year.
Readers can visit Kings Wild Project to find out more about his playing card projects, including his Fellowship of the Ring-themed deck. At the time of publishing, the Kickstarter for The Fellowship of the Ring deck has 50 hours before it closes. You can check it out here.
Last month we had the awesome privilege of sitting down with Daniel Falconer of Weta Workshop. We talked about the last 20 years of collecting Middle-earth, and how things have changed over those years. We also chatted about current stuff like the new Strider Statue; the things to come; and the hopes for items we may see in the next 20 years. You all are going to love this lengthy conversation, as we pick Daniel’s brain and get into all the stuff he’s seen over the last 20 years at Weta Workshop. We at TORn thank Daniel for his time, and Weta Workshop for lending him to us for a couple of hours!
According to Gamespot, the free-to-play MMO game The Lord of the Rings Online SteamDB recorded 3,700 concurrent players on April 21.
This peak represents the highest simultaneous numbers since 2012 when the game first launched on Steam. Gamespot points out that the numbers don’t take into consideration the people who play via the game’s own proprietary launcher and client.
Players from TORn’s Discord also report that, anecdotally, the game’s servers have been noticeably busier recently with many new characters. The surge may coincide with the current 15th anniversary event that offers both current and new players a huge swag of freebies when they login.
There’s some movement on the Tolkien publishing front. People out there who are cover collectors (and the variety and number of covers that The Lord of the Rings has had over the years is pretty wild), will be especially interested.
Rings of Power series tie-in covers
First, Harper Collins (through its subsidiary William Morrow Paperbacks) is set to release a Rings of Power series tie-in edition. The new covers for Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King will each show images out of the promotional poster series that we first saw in February. Props to u/mleaning on r/lotr for finding these covers.
Tie-in covers for The Lord of the Rings are, of course, not new. Houghton Mifflin released movie tie-in versions featuring imagery from Peter Jackson’s films for both hardcover and softcover in September 2001. (If our ancient scrapbook is playing nice, and you want to look at some ancient history, you can check those out here.)
Aside: I don’t love those as covers, honestly. I’m not convinced that they’re good imagery for this purpose. That is, the images don’t really accord with the thematic thrust of each individual title and it’s a bit of a stretch to make an association between image and content.
However, if they are your cup tea, pre-orders are available on Amazon already (though, amusingly, they’ve taken the covers down), with a publshing date of July 5, 2022.
Folio Society 1,000 copy illustrated limited edition
Or you could shell out for this new edition published by The Folio Society. It features exclusive artwork, an introduction by Alan Lee, and is beautifully bound, typeset and illustrated.
At a thousand quid, it’s also extremely expensive.
At the time of writing though, there are only a handful of the 1,000 copies left unsold. So, if this is your thing and you have cash burning a hole in your pocket, don’t delay. It will be published in mid-May.
If you like the look of this, but can’t afford the eye-watering price Folio Society has other editions of Tolkien’s Middle-earth books. Personally, I think this printing of The Silmarillion looks really nice even if the illustrations aren’t Alan Lee classics. At 49 quid, it’s much more reasonably priced, and ultimately probably better value for readers.
If the smallest person can change the course of the history…what can one of the largest officially licensed Lord of the Rings collectible do? Impress some friends – that’s for sure!
We will include the fine details below, but in case you were wonder…YES…it comes with a full realized light up The One Ring, but alas, the finger is NOT removable! (Between us, that does feel like a bit of a lost opportunity)
Worried about the life-span on this investment? The whole piece is made up of a high grade fiberglass material, equivalent to that of a steel alloy – resistant to temperature fluctuations and humidity.
There are only 99 being made for the entire world…so if you have the money to spare, you probably don’t want to wait to get one on the secondary market. It is expected to starting shipping in November of this year. As a small aside, with anything thing big, don’t expect it to ship via a standard delivery service. Guaranteed this is one of those items that is going to arrive in a truck!
