(omg i am so bad at posting my art in a timely fashion) Anyway, I was very happy to create the cover for last autumn's Flammifer (the magazine of the German Tolkien society. It is a sister piece to my Eärendil art that I made for the cover of Amon Hen, which showed Eärendil's voyage and sacrifices and how people on Arda call out to him from his view. In this image we see him from the perspective of everyone that looks for him in the night sky, as a eucatastrophe returning for a last time.
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Thinking again about that line in The Lord of the Rings about elves making images appear through song
The trauma of the Darkening being so profound that only a select few are able to sing of the Two Trees in such a way that brings their specters into the air, perhaps only at a ceremony or ritual in remembrance
Elves who can weave into their craft the birdsong of species long gone regionally or completely extinct and just for a moment, bring them back.
Images in song having different meanings than their literal interpretation, the development of symbology.
The peaks of Thangorodrim appearing occasionally in first age songs but all but forbidden once the real peaks fell, as though bringing to life in song would be an ill omen.
The differences between cultures and in different times regarding symbology, practice and taboo. For example some cultures revelling in depictions of Morgoth being defeated or caricatured whereas others forbid any depiction of him in this form. Some may utilise this art form only for ceremonial purposes or worship whereas others use it often including for leisure and revelry.
The discourse and contention about whether images from songs truly represent their subject, the use of song to distort or hide as I talked about on my post about taboo topics and images from song
Actually, I like Sauron the most in those days when he was still serving the Valar. Recently, I just drew the so-called "light version" of Sauron. Agree, he's charming
I absolutely love love love the horror of late stage beleriand
Like at this point Morgoth has taken over literally everywhere except the haven of Sirion and the isle of Balar
The fruit is poisoned, rotten, or full of viscera
Animals are unnaturally aggressive and sauron''s wolves prowl through the land
Small ponds through beleriand are clear enough and look safe, even if you boil it you will die if you drink from these ponds
The land itself has been corrupted by Morgoth's evil, maybe beleriand itself is a thrall
Held captive and used against the very people it used to shelter
Nargothrond which was once a home for elves and dwarves now lies under a dragon's curse
Doriath that was safe in Melian's veil and the last place free of Morgoth's evil is now populated by fell spirits, Menegroth's once beautiful halls are now empty except for invasive plants and the glowing eyes of wraiths
Gondolin the secret city that hid away from war and bloodshed is burned
Himring which defended the frozen north is used as a fortress for the Enemy
The pools of ivrin once protected by ulmo now lie defiled by glaurung
The plants once foraged for healing now cause painful deaths and sickness
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Comparative Sizes of Beleriand and the Lands to the East
I put this together as a resource for my own writing awhile back and at first just stared at it in utter bewilderment. Is Beleriand really this small?! It seems like the answer is yes, and I'll give a quick explanation as to why below.
I've seen various stitched together maps of the First and Second/Third Ages, but the primary ones I've encountered still end up with the distance measurements not quite reflecting what we have in the text or map legends.
Without going into too many of the tedious bits, the basic overview is that I put this together by superimposing the maps in Photoshop, aligning Himring and Tol Himling, then drawing this out till the two iterations of the Ered Luin crossed. The primary thing here was ensuring the distance between Himring/Himling and the Ered Luin remained the same in both places.
There were various other details as well, but the key factor for determining whether this was feasible was to check whether it held up when comparing the numerical distances we are given as well.
This is simplest on the map of Middle-earth in the Third Age, since the official map was kind enough to provide a mileage legend. However, the Beleriand map was not nearly so forthcoming. So off we go to everyone's favorite chapter of the Silmarillion (Of Beleriand and its Realms) where we find that East Beleriand is described as being
at its widest a hundred leagues from Sirion to Gelion and the borders of Ossiriand
If this is 100 leagues, then we can convert that to roughly 345 miles and move that rasterized line down within the same file and line it up with our mileage legend from the map of Third Age Middle-earth (scaled as shown in the first image). Which gives us this:
Almost spot on!
Which, I'm not going to lie, really shocked me. I expected to find that this was wildly off since I've always assumed these maps to be fairly equal in my head. But no, it seems that all the epics of the First Age really did happen in an area no larger than Eriador.
One last image that I find interesting is isolating just Beleriand from this stitched map while retaining the water's tint so you can see the approximate whereabouts of the new shorelines would have ended up.
