Cor Blok

Those of you who follow the yearly Tolkien Calendars may remember this illustrator from the 2011 and 2012 calendars, but I have not paid attention to such things since the mid 70s.  In those days it was ether Tolkien's own artwork or the Brothers Hildebrandt (who seem to have added pinup art and even soft porn to their later work), who also illustrated the LOTR knockoff series Sword of Shannara. 

But this is the Dutch illustrator Cor Blok

More paintings, and bits of an interview with him for the Tolkien 100th in 1992. 

Tolkien liked these enough to have purchased two (and was gifted a third) and hung them in his house. If it seems strange that he liked this style, it would pay to return to his own artwork for LOTR and The Hobbit, which I wrote about a couple of years ago, which has, in turn, links to further examples. They are both using flat, minimalist, block color style and abstract representations, so he likely got Blok more readily than the rest of the faux-medievalists who were in the early Tolkien craze. I am already beginning to get the point. They don't look like hobbits, but they aren't meant to. They are meant to suggest things about characters and scenes that aid the imagination in reading.