#Jrr tolkien middle earth map professional

During World War II, Baynes’s skills as an artist were pressed into service, and she found herself making maps and nautical charts for the British Admiralty. Baynes was an English artist who spent time as a child in India.

#Jrr tolkien middle earth map professional

Tolkien visualized and detailed his world, down to the sketch of a contour and the runnel of a little stream, but he passed his maps on to either his son, Christopher Tolkien, or professional artist, Pauline Baynes, to adapt for the reader. Wired did an article on The Art of the Lord of the Rings, a book which I have now added to my personal wish list. And then all could be save by the eagles. Later, as the story of Lord of the Rings grew more complex, he maintained a map to scale of the various journeys of the characters to keep track of when and where they were in space and time so that the ring could be destroyed in Mount Doom as hope for victory dimmed at the Black Gate. The escape of the Hobbits in The Fellowship of the Ring, something I could so clearly visualize as they struggled to get out of the Shire, Tolkien had mapped as he wrote. In addition to being a literary genius, Tolkien was an amateur artist and sketched as he visualized the world he was creating. Tolkien had a very different set of tools and process in terms of map creation than he would today even as a fantasy author. Computers were barely a science fiction dream. In 1937, cartographers were hunched over stereoplotters and maps were mass produced through lithographic printing and copper plates. Today, I spend 98% of my time on the computer, digitally drawing in Arc GIS, Adobe Illustrator, or adjusting shading in Adobe Photoshop. The cartographic process was quite different when Tolkien was building Middle-earth in the 1930s and ‘40s as compared to now. Hopefully adding new books soon! Ode to the Writer/Artist/Cartographer Nerd status: my current Tolkien collection. I know that statement is not without controversy. Tolkien’s attention to detail, the depths he went into to build his world, and yes, I love Tolkien’s maps. As a map maker, I endlessly appreciate J.R.R. I can’t say that my love for Lord of the Rings led me to be a cartographer, but I do vividly remember picking up The Hobbit as a middle schooler, bored and home sick with the flu, and spending a lot of time with the map illustration tucked into the first pages before I even joined Bilbo on his journey.