All artwork and text is copyrighted by Paul Lasaine, unless otherwise attributed to the respective copyright owner. It is illegal to publish, print or reproduce any such artwork or text without written permission by the artist or copyright owners.



Welcome to my my Portfolio Page.

This is where you'll find my professional work (and some personal pieces as well).

As always, I'm unable to post my current work, as it's for films that have yet to hit the big screen.

Don't forget to visit my BLOG. There's more of my work there, plus a bunch of other fun stuff.

Thursday, November 1, 2007

Lord of the Rings - Sketches

In 1999, I had the good fortune of being asked to work on Peter Jackson's, Lord of the Rings trilogy. After initially turning down the job (I was under contract with DreamWorks at the time), my wife talked me into accepting the offer. So on July 18th, which in New Zealand is the dead of winter, we left our home in sunny Southern California, bound for Middle Earth.

Initially, I was hired to be a Production Illustrator. But later, I was asked to be the Visual Effects Art Director, as well as the Scenic Unit Director. I would be lying if I said it was anything less than a dream job!

Below are some of the small color roughs I did for the films. (I'll post the larger Illustrations in an upcoming post.) You may have seen some of these images in the "Art Of LOTR" books, but sadly, the color reproductions in those books were terrible. This is what they were supposed to look like.

Unless otherwise noted, these are all acrylic painting.
































44 comments:

Steve Chon said...

wow, these are absolutely jaw dropping, been a big fan of yours since prince of egypt. thanks for posting these sir.

Ramses said...

Paul, you art is fantastic! the colors and composition inspired me

Jared Shear said...

Amazing stuff.....good thing your wife knocked some sense into you.

Was there a conscious decision to work mainly with paint and brush on these films as opposed to working digitally?

Paul Lasaine said...

Jared,
Was there a conscious decision to work mainly with paint and brushes...?

Yes. I'd been exclusively digital for the past year, and I didn't want my traditional painting skills to get rusty. So I promised myself I'd kick the digital habit for a while. Also, believe it or not, the LOTR art department was very low tech. We had one computer...a really buggy Mac, running an outdated version of Photoshop. Plus I shared an office with Alan Lee...the most low tech artist I've ever met...a genius with pencils and watercolor. I had to try to hold my own with him, and working digitally in the same room as Alan, would have somehow felt...I don't know...gimmicky.

paac said...

These are amazing. You are so good. As an illustration student, you are a true inspiration and someone to look up to. Keep up the great work!

Brett McCoy said...

Beautiful stuff! I'm glad you went low-tech on these!

Odon said...

Wow,wow,wow! Awesome stuff! Thanks for sharing. Very jealous...
Don

Sebastien Gallego said...

Amazing work Paul. You are a true inspiration to me. I'll come back often.

Sebastien

Shelly Wan said...

WOW~ I am blown away with happiness... Drop dead gorgeous!! You have no idea how happy i am looking at these~~~~~ ^______^
Thank you Thank you Thank you~

sw

Mathew Mossman said...

Simply amazing, these are the paintings that remind me of picking up the first LOTR art book and learning about your work.

I always thought you used gouache but I see now it's acrylic. I'm curious, what's the general size you worked these paintings at?

Hethe Srodawa said...

Wow, hot diggity. Thanks for sharing man. Your work is elusive and I'd only seen a sketch here or there but coworkers and other artists would always talk about you in awe. Now I finally get to see what they were talking about!

Bill Robinson said...

Holy wow. ::picks jaw up off floor:: ...these are incredible. I also can't even imagine sharing an office with Alan Lee. o.O I want to see more!

Tom Scholes said...

Simply unreal and simply stunning. I'm in awe. Where are you located and do you teach?

Mark McDonnell said...

Beautiful Paul. Such a great feelling of looseness yet they are all complete. Such a nice variety of palette's too.

MAC

Shuku said...

Good. Lord. And. Butter. -Beautiful-. Just what I needed to get my mind off packing for my competition in Jakarta since I'll be flying off Monday and NOTHING is done right now...except halfway packing.

I love them, love them, LOVE THEM. It's great to know you work in acrylics, because I do too to a limited degree. Floating colour, like in tole painting, though I'm rusty at it.

More! More! I'm really greedy yes, but this is sooooooooooo gorgeous...

--Shuku

Benjamin Plouffe said...

Geez, i just feel like crawling into a hole with my blanky. In anycase , Great Stuff! im blown away.

Armand Serrano said...

Breathtaking!...now how can we turn these artworks into an alien movie...

Ben Mauro said...

thank you, thank you, thank you!

daren bader said...

beautiful. There is so much going on in each little gem that just points out how amazingly talented you are. I hate gushing, but MAN these are worth gushing over!

Any chance you'll collect up the unpublished work and print it someday..?

Bao Pham said...

Makes me wanna cry they're so beautiful.

Lux said...

I am in awe...your sense of light is powerful. This work is a glimpse of Heaven. Thank you for being so generous to post them!

Paul Lasaine said...

Daren Asked, "Any chance you'll collect up the unpublished work and print it someday..?"

I've always hoped to publish an "Art of Paul Lasaine" book...someday. But as all this work was done for hire, I don't own the publishing right to any of it. (Kind of like how the Beatles don't own a lot of their own songs.) Not that I couldn't secure the rights, but I know it'll be a big pain in butt...dealing with all the legal departments of the various studios.
That's why I started this blog...so at least folks like you could see this stuff.

alien said...

Dam, Paul stop making us all look bad! :)

Paul Lasaine said...

But Barry, I just started:)

Jackson Sze said...

Thanks for posting these.

I enjoyed the art books as much as I did the movies and the original Tolkien novels.

The colors in these are truly stunning and sophisticated.

Marcos Mateu said...

I saw some of them at your computer as screensavers some time ago.
In my opinion the movie obviously looks good, but these designs look even better!!

Marc Deering said...

Jeeeezus...!!!!!
Beautiful!!!!

laurent said...

These pictures are amazing!
Thanks Paul.
Laurent

Kinman said...

I really like how simple and balanced you keep your statements.. something I have to keep reminding myself to do better.. Thanks for posting these! Great studies for geeky artists like me to see and learn from :)

Dave said...

Holy geez....amazing!!!

Josh Kao said...

these are insane!

dicet said...

that's it Paul.
I'm just gonna stop painting, quit my job and set a Paul Lasaine shrine in my apartment and pray everyday.

post more please!

Please~~!!

SIM-R said...

Breath taking......really inspiring works . The sense of scale and epic feel is fantastic .

Thanks for posting .

Paul Lasaine said...

Dice,

No need to set up a shrine...you can join me at the shrine I built for you.

Bobby Chiu said...

geeeeeez... jaw-dropping ridiculously amazing!!!!!

Marco Bucci said...

JUST when I felt I knew the first thing about painting, I see this. Thank you!

ALEXIS said...

amazing !!!

Chris Sears said...

Great Stuff!!!

you and nathan must be Freemasons or something... some kind of secret painting brotherhood.

laurent said...

These pictures are some of my favorites ,...simply beautifull.

Eleonora said...

I've always loved all of your works and LOTR ones in particular.

Can we have some more? ;)

Anyway having them on line at last it's just great!

Thanks!

Richey said...

Those are awesome! You can tell they were put into consideration in the movies. Great work and keep sketching and painting!

Dennis said...

Hi Paul,
Great work. I knew you when you were a little kid. Man you really blossomed.

Take care
Dennis Derr

Jessica said...

I have to say your art style is breath-taking. I am studying your artwork for my A2 a-level art and im very much used to the graphic style artwork rather than traditional use of acrylic. However, after seeing your work it really has inspired me to give it a shot!

Phil Dragash said...

funny you mentioned the color reproductions of the "art of LOTR" books. I always admired your paintings within them, but I was always rather dumbfounded by how muted and desaturated they were. I was like "shouldn't color-key paintings be bursting with contrast and color?"

NOW.. for the first time in YEARS do I understand the truth! "The color reproductions were terrible". These look so much better than what was actually published. Thanks, Paul! You inspire me, sir!