Helm's Deep

Recently I received an email from Michael Kaluta, one of the great illustrators of our time, in response to a much earlier post about his artwork that did double duty for J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard properties. Along with Kaluta's gracious compliments, a lovely surprise were a couple of jpeg attachments.

One was this magnificent and epic preliminary drawing of the battle at Helm's Deep:

Above image © Michael Wm Kaluta

For comparison, I'm including the above scan from a Tolkien calendar that was kindly sent over some time ago by Christophe Jannin, a French illustrator, living in New Zealand.

Quoting an excerpt from Kaluta's email (with his permission):

(Below) is a jpeg of that full Conan cover (that was originally supposed to be the center-spread for a proposed Tolkien calendar in 1979-1980 that didn't happen, SO, I adapted it for that Marvel wrap-around cover . . . ) The Tolkien folks printed the Tolkien part the way I asked them to in the 1994 calendar: Conan gone, image reversed, but the book Realms of Tolkien published the entire art: thank goodness . . .

Above, a scan sent by Kaluta. Below, the printed wraparound cover.

Update:

Pierre D reminds us of a good interview with Kaluta at:

http://octavioaragao.blogspot.com/2011/03/high-water-marks-and-shadows-interview.html