The Withywindle Willow

 

Title: The Withywindle Willow

Graphite pencil, fineliner and grey brush pens on A5 sketchbook paper, 2024

This drawing started from a piece by Tolkien himself. While writing the chapter “The Old Forest”, he sketched Old Man Willow in pencil and coloured pencil: an autumn tree with yellow leaves, its roots spreading towards a quiet, marshy pool. The coloured pencil softens the menace of the drawing, but the wriggling roots and arm-like branches hint at a tree that can move. tolkienestate

For my version I kept the bones of his composition, with the willow on the left and the water opening up to the right. Then I changed almost everything else. Where Tolkien’s willow is gentle and golden, I wanted something heavier and darker. Hammond and Scull note that his tree doesn’t look as enormous as the hobbits found it, so I let the trunk take over the page, twisted and knotted, with its weeping branches hanging like curtains over the scene. The hobbits, by contrast, are tiny. Wikipedia

At the foot of the tree, the four hobbits are caught in the trouble that Old Man Willow has set for them. The willow lulls them to sleep. Frodo is pushed into the river and held under by the roots until Sam saves him, while Merry and Pippin end up trapped inside the tree. Far across the water, a small figure stands watching: Tom Bombadil. In the book he is the one who frees the hobbits, singing the willow to sleep. Here, he is still a distant presence, but already on his way. tolkiengatewayWikipedia

The drawing began in graphite pencil, which I then reinforced with a black fineliner, building the bark and the forest with dense stippling and hatching. Different shades of grey from brush pens handle the shadows and the misty slope behind the tree, which keeps the whole scene quiet and slightly oppressive.

Old Man Willow is older than The Lord of the Rings itself. He first appeared in 1934, in a poem in The Oxford Magazine, years before the hobbits ever met him. Seems he has been scaring people for a long time. tolkiengateway