The Brothers Hildebrandt

I aim to talk more about the good things in life here.

Today I’m going to talk just a little bit about artists Tim and Greg Hildebrandt, though I don’t honestly know much about them—that is, beyond this wonderful interview the hosts of The Prancing Pony Podcast had with Greg Hildebrandt a few years ago. Mostly I’d just like to share some of MY favorite paintings from their vast body of work. Tim passed away in 2006 and his brother, Greg, sadly passed away one month ago.

When someone passes away who you don’t know, but whose work you did, I guess it’s natural for those works to appear in the foreground of your mind. When beloved actors pass away, we recall fondly their movies we loved. When an artist goes, well, the images that were impressed in my brain long, long ago float to the surface.

So yeah, I’d like a big part of this blog to be about appreciation. About things I like, things I love, things have had a massive positive influenced on me for life. Things old (nostalgia!) and things new. Yes, I’ll definitely go back and keep sharing my thoughts on Tolkien matters—and eventually more about The Rings of Power, because that show and especially its legacy here to stay and it’s worth sifting the good from the bad—but there’s plenty more beyond that.

So let’s begin.

Illustrators, like musicians, occupy a fascinating place in this world. We can kind of get to know them—an inner them—without ever actually knowing them, the real them. Have you ever finished reading a novel and just kind of felt, for a fleeting moment, like you know the author? Back in the days before the internet and our ability to actually contact artists or authors easily, this feeling was more common. I guess it’s both a blessing and a curse being able to see what our favorite artists/writers/illustrators actually share online, isn’t it?

I, and many others, for example, have had the good fortune to be able to email with, exchange social media interactions with, or even meet some of today’s fantasy illustrators. For me, that includes artists like Donato Giancola, Ted Nasmith, Kip Rasmussen, Justin Gerrard, Jenny Dolfen, Talon Dunning, Craig Spearing, Claudio Pozas, and Tyler Jacobson. I count myself lucky to have corresponded with or even collaborated with these people in some way.

Back to Hildebrandts. I never did have contact with them, but their work was in my imagination from an early age, at least as far back in my memory as Middle-earth itself. I must have encountered old calendars, books, and even early internet websites. One place where their work really struck me was a documentary I got on DVD back in 2001 probably as a Christmas present: Secrets of Middle-earth: Inside Tolkien’s The Hobbit. It featured Hildrebrandt art and music by the prog band Mostly Autumn. Which had me go out and find their album Music Inspired by The Lord of the Rings.

And which I can’t recommend highly enough. But it’s probably hard to find now. Even YouTube only has a bit of it. The song “Goodbye Alone” is particularly catchy; especially at the 42-secod mark. I regularly have that melody stuck in my head, and I don’t mind it.

Hildebrandt art is all over the documentary and album, as their art was elsewhere long before. It was the Hildebrandt brothers, in fact, who gave hobbits disproportionally large feet (Tolkien never said they were especially large), and yet we’re all accustomed to that now.

Setting Middle-earth aside for a moment, another place where I became familiar with the brothers was from a book specifically of Tim’s work titled The Fantasy Art Techniques of Tim Hildebrandt. This painting, The Wizard Glade, I could stare at forever.

These guys do shafts of sunlight streaming through the canopy of a forest like no one else. Another example of exactly that: The painting below is featured on the cover of a Forgotten Realms D&D sourcebook, Moonshae, but I actually know it best from this divider in1993’s Monstrous Compendium binder. It’s glorious.

The painting is titled Forest of the Unicorn. This could be right out of the movie Legend, with both sunlight and pollen floating through the air. This very image is often what comes to mind when I simply hear the word fantasy.

Now these next two paintings—Ogre Castle and In the Sea Nymph’s Lair—were covers of novels I’ll probably talk about someday here on this blog. I just love them.

Oh yes! And here is a book I grew up with: Greg Hildebrandt’s Favorite Fairy Tales. The art is delightful, even if this Rapunzel is the most bored-ever Rapunzel I’ve ever seen. Which I find amusing in itself.

I love that extremely practical hook on the side of the window. As an adult, I also appreciate the rusty discoloration that “drips” down from places where iron is placed on the sides of buildings. No way I noticed that little as a kid. Even fairy tales should include some realistic weathering on the façades of its storybook towers.

Here are some samples from this book. The Little Mermaid is a no-brainer.

The following image is definitely the first one I think about whenever I think about the cyclops in Greek myths. Polyphemus in particular. This is a very . . . visceral moment to illustrate, too! You can feel that heat.

This painting of the Pied Piper is my default one.

Setting that book of fairy tales aside, there are others I go back to.

The Hildebrandts did a couple of Dungeons & Dragons calendars, too, back in the early 80s, when TSR had the reins. I wish I had a copy of this one, for example:

This next one is titled “Fang the Gnome,” and apparently it was used as a cover for New American Library in 1988 (but I can’t seem to a find an image of the book itself). Just something noble about this I love.

This next one is titled “Zormena’s Castle” and comes from The Fantasy Cookbook, a cookbook by Tim’s wife, Rita. Incidentally, played nurse #1 in a very cheesy-looking 1983 movie, The Deadly Spawn, which starred their son. And naturally, Tim did the poster art.

Anyway, this is just badass:

Might as well end with Middle-earth, since this is where it starts for me. We can easily forgive the Hildebrandt’s choice to give hobbits big feet, because it’s led to a whole subgenre of halfling illustration (even outside of Tolkien) that gives them a charming, distinctive look.

Can we maybe also forgive the Hildebrandts for possibly being the originators of Balrogs having non-metaphorical wings . . . ?

That’s from a 1977 Tolkien calendar. Ralph Bakshi’s also-winged Balrog came a year later. So who knows? Yes, we can forgive them. There’s no harm in there being an eternal debate about whether Balrogs possess actual wings, as long as it’s friendly and we can all agree that no matter what, they cannot fly.

This one, The Pillars of the Kings, I’m presenting not as a full painting, but as just a photograph because I’m used to looking at is a two-page spread like this. It’s just so cool. No, these two lords shouldn’t really look like twins like this, because they’re meant to represent Isildur and his little brother, Anárion, as grown men and kings. And they should be holding axes, not . . . walking sticks? But it’s so majestic anyway. Plus this was from 1978, and the details of Tolkien’s world weren’t discussed quite as much as they are today.

One more from Middle-earth. Orthanc from 1976!

The depiction of Isengard is overly simplistic, maybe, but my favorite part—and the reason I’m sharing this one—is because I absolutely love the expression on Saruman’s face here. He looks miffed. That’s not some casual stroll he’s on. This looks like a scene before the coming (and imprisoning) of Gandalf, and it looks like he’s hurrying to the outer gate of Isengard to attend to something personally because one of his servants (man or orc?) screwed up and if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.

I’d love to know what book he’s holding. Many Colours: White Cloth May Be Dyed, his personal memoirs that he’s still working on?

Okay, one more. The Hildebrandts may have helped pioneer and popularized J.R.R. Tolkien in the world of paint, book, and calendar illustration, and influenced countless artists after them, but they should also get credit for placing a deep iron in another famous fire right from the start.

This famous movie poster needs no introduction.

Tim said this about the brothers’ work on the Star Wars poster:

“When Greg and I did this poster back in 1977 the advertising agency handling the Fox account only provided us with a few photographs from the film. They gave us no likenesses of the main stars—Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher. They told us not worry because the actors were ‘unknowns’ and, besides, the movie would not be a hit. The painting had to be done in 36 hours as the film was to be premiered the following week!”

Well.

Rest in peace, Tim and Greg.

And seriously, if you can get ahold of this album by Glass Hammer, it’s worth it . . .