Ancalagon The Black

Sorry for the long hiatus guys, 14's been a busy year

Sketch of Ancalagon the Black emerging from the depths of Angband. Originally this was going to be a single page in my sketchbook, but Morgoth's great leviathan simply could not be contained.

I always pictured Ancalagon as sort of a dumb beast. I'm fond of this idea that the "first generation" of Morgoth's monsters, like Drauglin, Ungoliante, or Glaurung all have these very distinct (and kind of larger-than-life, especially Glaurung) personalities, as they are willing recruits of Morgoth's; maiar spirits who took and/or were assigned forms that suited them on the earthly plane, and so possess a certain degree of individuality and self-possessedness to them (Drauglin I see as essentially Huan's contemporary; the two are probably maiar of similar station who fought for different sides and took similar-but-different forms) whereas with the later generations (of wolves and dragons, not spiders) were bred by Morgoth purposely, and kind of "bred up" for size and aggression; more bestial and more under Morgoth's control than their more independent and sapient sires. with Carcharoth and Ancalagon, being the "greatest that ever lived" of their respective species, I picture them as the product of over-breeding; they're huge and powerful and do what Morgoth wants them to, but to some degree the personality has been bred out of them, and Ancalagon especially I like to picture as bearing some evidence of impending health problems on account of extensive genetic tampering, like people with gigantism or beef cattle that have been force-fed huge amounts of growth hormone. He was made for the sole purpose of being huge and blasting the dark lord's foes, and not expected to maintain any kind of personal quality of life. Here we see him being lead out by teams of trolls on heavy chains, like some impossibly vast, sickly plucked chicken, perhaps he is going blind from cataracts, not a "free" creature like Glaurung was, comparatively. It's not an idea I think Tolkien would have preferred (Smaug at least, being a later dragon, is clearly not lacking for personality though I doubt he was old enough to have been bred by Morgoth) but I just like the image and what it says about Morgoth and how, by his limited vision - this all-consuming desire to be master over everything - he  manages to ruin even the cool things he's created, taking willing and independent servants like the dragons of Glaurung or the wolves of Drauglin and breeding these immense, mindless slaves out of them, a reflection of his own hollowness.

The idea to have him lead forward by chains on hooks dug into his hide, while underscoring his status as this shackled tormented creature, was partially inspired by those old photos of zeppelins being guided into air hangers by work teams. As a last note, I have almost always drawn dragons with six limbs (front and hind legs, and wings) but after having seen the magnificent job Jackson & Co. did in bringing Smaug to life, it's pretty impossible for me to imagine dragons with front paws, the "wyvern look" (as it is so annoyingly called) just feels so much more anatomically credible.

Part of the weekly Tolkien Sketchblog (which hopefully will be weekly again )