my childhood russian edition of lord of the rings had the most amazing, medievally styled illustrations by sergey yuhimov.
i haven’t appreciated them when i was a child (i obviously wanted something more aesthetically obvious), but now i think they’re just – really badass. going to upload all i could find, in three posts.
These are amazing. I love all the different styles – kind of a parallel to how the style and tone of the writing shifts back and forth between near-modern and archaic.
I’m particularly fond of the Balrog, just because it’s so different from every other depiction of that scene. His face looks like a cross between a Saxon helmet and a locomotive engine.