Orc Faces

A couple orc faces in gouache with photoshop touch-ups; this was my first time experimenting with gouache (one of my first experiments with photoshop as well) and I find a lot of the time it helps, when trying out a new medium, to fall back on a familiar subject matter. These came from my recent (and umpteenth) re-reading of the "Uruk-Hai" chapter in the two towers, in which Tolkien, for the first time, gives us a look at the orcs from a little closer than the point of a sword, and orcs are pretty fucking scary up close and personal, especially when you're in their power as Merry and Pippin find themselves; their lives dependent upon some tenuous orders of Ugluk's that seemingly half of the company are just chomping at the bit to worm their way around, leering at the hobbits with their horrible faces and prodding at their soft flesh with harsh, clawed hands. The whole chapter has the feel of a prison rape in the making.

In many ways Tolkien's orcs seem to represent this all-purpose parody of society's "lower elements" especially as reckoned in Tolkien's time; like the weasels in "the Wind and the Willows" they speak in cockney accents and generally come off like grotesque exaggerations of crude working-class ruffians, best dealt with with a stern hand (usually one wielding a sword in Tolkien's world). Especially in the figure on the left, I'd hoped to somehow convey a distinct englishness to his face and expression, similar to how I might depict Mr. Hyde or some of the really bad pirates from "Treasure Island", while drawing out his features to horrible, inhuman dimensions; his face and head jutting from his shoulders like a living gargoyle, culminating in that leering (and dangerous looking) set of choppers. I imagine this is perhaps the yellow-fanged guard poor Pippin wakes up to. The way I see them, the orcs should be sort of like those post-Darwin political cartoons or phrenologist theories come to life; the ones in which just about any type of perceived social undesirable (the poor, the "criminal element," the chinese, blacks, the irish, ect) were painted as depraved ape-monsters.