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Description
Morgoth returns back undergound, following his "victory" over fingolfin.
the duel with the elven king is a really bad day for morgoth. despite his unequaled power, he comes out to battle with fingolfin only very reluctantly, and fingolfin does more of a number on him than anyone, probably even morgoth hiding deep in his halls and fearing to come forth, would have guessed possible; wounding him seven times and even in his dying breath, crushed underfoot, managing to hobble him permanently. it is said that afterward morgoth broke the body of fingolfin and would have it cast to his wolves, i can imagine him in shame and fury, desperate to save face, shrieking the order at those of his creatures gathered in the doorway, only to have thorondor swoop down and maim him further before carrying off the body of fingolfin to where he can't mutilate it. left with nothing, wounded and utterly humiliated, he limps back through the doors of his kingdom, propping himself on the walls as he goes, the great hammer grond dragging in the dust behind him. it's small wonder the orcs make no boast of the day.
i try when possible to stay away from the by now well established john-howian aesthetic of bristling spikes and horns of stone and iron as the constant motif for evil in middle-earth, but it's just so damn appropriate for morgoth; violence and evil displayed in it's purest elemental form. i imagine this armor is not really an actual harness with buckles and rivets but something that he basically just willed into being on his way up to meet fingolfin's challenge, i was thinking of the passage where mogoth is remarked to "raise" the triple peaks of thangorodrim. as always with morgoth, it is a work of mindless, voracious excess, volcanic spires thrust outward and upward to ridiculous dimensions, black and bearing no device, signifying and invoking nothing but his own emptiness.
the duel with the elven king is a really bad day for morgoth. despite his unequaled power, he comes out to battle with fingolfin only very reluctantly, and fingolfin does more of a number on him than anyone, probably even morgoth hiding deep in his halls and fearing to come forth, would have guessed possible; wounding him seven times and even in his dying breath, crushed underfoot, managing to hobble him permanently. it is said that afterward morgoth broke the body of fingolfin and would have it cast to his wolves, i can imagine him in shame and fury, desperate to save face, shrieking the order at those of his creatures gathered in the doorway, only to have thorondor swoop down and maim him further before carrying off the body of fingolfin to where he can't mutilate it. left with nothing, wounded and utterly humiliated, he limps back through the doors of his kingdom, propping himself on the walls as he goes, the great hammer grond dragging in the dust behind him. it's small wonder the orcs make no boast of the day.
i try when possible to stay away from the by now well established john-howian aesthetic of bristling spikes and horns of stone and iron as the constant motif for evil in middle-earth, but it's just so damn appropriate for morgoth; violence and evil displayed in it's purest elemental form. i imagine this armor is not really an actual harness with buckles and rivets but something that he basically just willed into being on his way up to meet fingolfin's challenge, i was thinking of the passage where mogoth is remarked to "raise" the triple peaks of thangorodrim. as always with morgoth, it is a work of mindless, voracious excess, volcanic spires thrust outward and upward to ridiculous dimensions, black and bearing no device, signifying and invoking nothing but his own emptiness.
Image size
2552x3504px 1.56 MB
Make
Canon
Model
Canon MX890 series Network
© 2015 - 2024 TurnerMohan
Comments31
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Really interesting ideas. One of my favorite things about your art is the whole conceptual process behind it.
For whatever reason, I always imagined Morgoth as soft and squishy rather than iron-hard; probably to do with the fact that he gets repeatedly cut up and wounded. But there's also a fetid, polluting, creeping, passive quality to Morgoth's evil - we hear that he "marred" Arda by leaking his own essence into it. All of his lasting victories were won by passive, indirect contamination rather than "hard power". His evil is insidious and entropic.
I once read a theory that Morgoth is the personification of decay and entropy. His marring of Arda, then, was introducing entropy into the universe - the "fading of all things", as Tolkien called it. Things fall apart, nothing lasts forever, etc etc. It's pretty clear that Morgoth represents decay, disintegration, chaos, and annihilation (while Eru is the opposite - life, order, and existence); and, not surprisingly, he was himself victim to this process.
How to draw the Second Law of Thermodynamics personified? I dunno. Your depiction of spiky armor and a John Howe-ish look is just fine, although I'd personally draw him as a horrible stunted thing of cancer and slime, as if he's decaying from his own evil...
For whatever reason, I always imagined Morgoth as soft and squishy rather than iron-hard; probably to do with the fact that he gets repeatedly cut up and wounded. But there's also a fetid, polluting, creeping, passive quality to Morgoth's evil - we hear that he "marred" Arda by leaking his own essence into it. All of his lasting victories were won by passive, indirect contamination rather than "hard power". His evil is insidious and entropic.
I once read a theory that Morgoth is the personification of decay and entropy. His marring of Arda, then, was introducing entropy into the universe - the "fading of all things", as Tolkien called it. Things fall apart, nothing lasts forever, etc etc. It's pretty clear that Morgoth represents decay, disintegration, chaos, and annihilation (while Eru is the opposite - life, order, and existence); and, not surprisingly, he was himself victim to this process.
How to draw the Second Law of Thermodynamics personified? I dunno. Your depiction of spiky armor and a John Howe-ish look is just fine, although I'd personally draw him as a horrible stunted thing of cancer and slime, as if he's decaying from his own evil...