Cameron's Lord of the Rings Dreamscapes

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Hello, and welcome to my gallery of images inspired by JRR Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy. I first read this work, considered by many 'the greatest work of fantasy in Western Literature', when I was 12 years old...Since that time I have taken much pleasure from imagining the fantastic, morbid, brooding and sometimes enchanting places which Tolkien created.

Recently I have been experimenting with Bryce software to bring to visual format the images of these places which have been floating in my mind for years. In particular, I have recently been inspired by the wonderful music of Patrice Deceuninck, a young composer in northern France. Patrice replied to an interest I have in the music for the forthcoming Lord of the Rings films by Peter Jackson, and I downloaded a number of his music files, and thoroughly enjoyed them.

Patrice's music may be found here.

While I have been drawing with pen and paper for years, I have always avoided colour...just too complicated. You can see one of my drawings here; this is Odysseus shipwrecked in Phaecea. Another sample of my drawings is a series of anatomical sketches.

I don't have any drawings here, just Bryce renderings. I'm having a great deal of fun with this software, but I feel that it will be a tutorial in learning color composition (I'm normally using Bryce for my archaeological studies). I created the follwing images in a few nights, and I'll be working on more. These are experiments, and perhaps a bit garish, but I am trying to be a bit more subtle.

A note on the images: I do not try to be precise in terms of reflecting what Tolkien described: I show what my mind sees, which may not be precisely what is described in text. I am more after ambience than technical detail or accuracy. Also, these are somewhat low-resolution images: I have blown them up from the original size because I prefer a less sharp, 'non-computer-perfect' look for the images.

After the gallery, you can read some of my comments on Patrice's music -- or you can skip ahead to read those comments here.

Well, I hope you enjoy the pictures!

All images copyright Cameron M. Smith, 2000. Images may be copied and downloaded for personal use. Please include a link to my site if you are using these images on the web, so that people can read my ideas and rationale behind the illustrations.