Beren and Luthien

Middle-Earth's most famous lovers, living out their last days in peace under the eaves of Tol Galen, a slight change of pace for me.

The idea to depict them in old age was motivated primarily (if I'm being honest) by not feeling quite up to the task of depicting Luthien in her prime but also because it seemed a really good place in their story (namely the end) from which to view the story as a whole; their timeless, perfect love, their unparalleled feats, their overcoming of fate and death (or perhaps they were simply fated to do exactly as they did; it is after all by their union that a strain of divinity enters into the human race, which stands to inherit the earth one day) and their life upon returning from the Halls of Mandos, lived out in a kind of heaven-on-earth, isolated and content in their love and seemingly retired from the troubles of elves and men (robin williams' and anabella sciora's happy home in the hereafter in "what dreams may come" is basically what I think of for Dor-firn-i-Chuinar)

I wanted both of them, and especially Luthien, to actually look old (you know, not like a twenty five year old beauty queen in old-age makeup, like you see far too often in the last scenes of those decade-spanning movies) in some ways the image (the one in my head, not necessarily the one I was able to put down on paper) of the most beautiful of all the children of Illuvatar, born to live forever, growing old and dying, but happy and in the arms of her beloved is both impossibly sad but also joyous, like the Lay of Leithian itself; the loss of Luthien is a sore one from which the elves and seemingly the earth itself will never entirely recover, but she was lost of her own decision, and did so, as per the lay's closing line, without sorrow. I could imagine the two of them leaving the world like this, to be found where they lie by Dior shortly thereafter.

Part of the Weekly Tolkien Sketchblog. Special thanks to John Howe for the bramble leaves (I never get tired of ripping those off)