Friday at the Mathom-House: Julia Alekseeva

The Mathom-house it was called; for anything that Hobbits had no immediate use for, but were unwilling to throw away, they called a ‘mathom’.

–The Fellowship of the Ring; Prologue 

Okay, okay . . . so I'm a little late on this one again. But any Friday is a cause for celebration, right? Even if that celebration has to be a bit, um . . . retroactive. Anyways, this week we'll be checking out the amazing art of Julia Alekseeva, better known as CG-Warrior over at deviantart.com. CG-Warrior has shared some amazing Middle-Earth art, both from The Hobbit and from LOTR. She's got other great stuff as well, but we'll try and keep our focus on the Tolkien-related pieces.

What makes Julia's stuff so good? My favorite thing about her art is that it looks like it could have come straight from an illustrated edition of Tolkien's work. I mean, check out Bilbo below . . . hand's down this is my favorite interpretation of the world's greatest hobbit.

So, jump past the break and enjoy the rest of Julia's art:

Bilbo Baggins

Fridays at the Mathom-House: Otis Frampton

The Mathom-house it was called; for anything that Hobbits had no immediate use for, but were unwilling to throw away, they called a ‘mathom’.

–The Fellowship of the Ring; Prologue 

Friday! Another week is over, the weekend is looming and its time to head on over to take a pit-stop here at the Mathom-House, where there's a whole lot of awesome-ness in a hole in the ground to celebrate! This week we'll be looking at the Hobbit/LOTR artwork of Otis Frampton. I stumbled on this guy's work a few months ago and couldn't get over just how good it is. His art has an amazing, stylized look, yet the details don't suffer for it. Frampton also does a great job of imbuing his images with atmosphere. Take a look for yourself:

Bilbo and the Dragon

The thing I like best about this first image is the sheer size of Smaug . . . the guy is HUGE, and Frampton did a great job of making the dragon's tail disappear into the haze of the chamber. Like I mentioned above, effects like that lend a sense of depth and atmosphere that make this picture really fun.

More great art after the break: