Ever since Peter Jackson’s trilogies first hit theaters a few years ago, many a LORD OF THE RINGS fan has been fleeced by numerous tie-in books that hoped to grab some bucks simply by slapping the LOTR name on the cover. It worked, again and again. Yet Alan Lee’s THE LORD OF THE RINGS SKETCHBOOK is not to be lumped in with those; in fact, it’s literally a work of art. And this comes from someone who is certainly – even famously – no fan of LOTR, whether in print or film format.
Lee, who won an Oscar for art directing THE RETURN OF THE KING, offers fans an up-close look at more than 150 illustrations he drew to help Jackson envision his mighty undertaking. They may be “just pencil sketches,” but they are extraordinary pencil sketches. Even his Cate Blanchett looks as if it were traced off a photograph, which I’m pretty sure it wasn’t. The man has talent to burn.
In fact, a majority of the conceptual art look like it was struck directly from the films’ negatives, so close are they to what you ended up seeing onscreen. A few were drawn especially for this collection, and the handsome hardcover includes some full-color plates that show the extent of Lee’s skills, which the detail and dimension of the sketches only hint at.
This SKETCHBOOK could have been perceived as a crass cash-in if not for Lee supplementing the art with text. It’s one thing to show a piece; it’s another to explain the thought process behind it, the translation from page to screen. That’s the kind of touch (along with Ian McKellen’s introduction) that makes this volume a must-have for every LOTR fan’s coffee table.
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Too bad you can not get anymore of the swords. Probably one of the greatest trilogys to have ever been made next to Star Wars