Like anybody who’s anybody, I’ve been re-reading the Hobbit before it hits theaters next month. And, like all the cool artists on the interwebs, I wanted to do an illustration or two.
Except I didn’t make it past the first paragraph.
The Hobbit is an illustrator’s dream, filled with spectacular scenes of distant mountains, grim creatures, jolly elves, burning pines and evil forests. “Never mind that,” I thought. “Let’s just start painting the very the beginning.”
In his opening line, Tolkien describes a sort of anti-Hobbit hole to better distinguish the squalor of most underground dwellers from the gentrified nature of Hobbits.
“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.”
We could pause here and do a socio-political analysis, but let's not tarnish the fairy-tale, shall we? Here’s my visual take on The Hobbit, Paragraph One:
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| The unHobbit-hole. Nothing to sit on. Nothing to eat. Bits of worm. |
I’ll leave the rest of the book to more accomplished illustrators.
