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Description
All typed text in the drawings above is taken from The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, both by J.R.R. Tolkien. These quotations are included here as context for the images, which are meant to be a commentary on the work.

I read the Lord of the Rings for the first time this summer, about 80 years after everyone has already read it. I liked it a lot! I couldn’t get very far into it as a kid. I didn’t have the patience to get through all of the setup.

I did read The Hobbit as a kid. I always had a vivid mental image of Gollum being kind of an amphibian thing, looking something like the cave fishes he eats. (And the descriptions of animal scurrying, flat feet, huge pale eyes, etc. in LOTR only bolstered that image.) I was a little surprised to grow up and find out that apparently, no one else sees Gollum this way. There is a pretty strong consensus (which seems to pre-date the Peter Jackson films - which I also liked a lot-) that Gollum is a stunted ugly goblin Tarzan. Except for Rankin-Bass, who get points for creativity, but lose points for the excessive amount of chill granted to a character who clearly has none.

Since I couldn’t find any illustrations that matched my mental image of Gollum, I tried to set out to depict it myself. I don’t think this is any great work of art, I am no character designer, but it was a fun exercise and I got some lively cartoons out of it.
Some points to note:

- Yes, he is fully clothed. Apparently, that was the intention?

In a manuscript written to guide illustrators to the appearance of his characters, Tolkien explained this by saying that Gollum had pale skin, but wore dark clothes and was often seen in poor light. The Hobbit states he has pockets, in which he keeps a tooth sharpening rock, goblin teeth, wet shells, and a scrap of bat wing. Despite these details, he is generally depicted wearing a loincloth or naked in illustrations and adaptations.
- lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Gollum#Ch…

I’m all for letting overwhelming cultural perception override an author’s original intentions. (And I do mean overwhelming; I could not find a single fully-clothed Gollum in either wiki gallery, excluding pre-ring Smeagol, of course.) However, when I drew the tattered hoodie, I liked the look of the tattered hoodie and kept it. I assume the desire to depict Gollum as naked stems both from his aquatic habitat and the question of: where’s he getting his clothes? Surely, he doesn’t scurry down to the Gondor Wal-Mart and pick out PJs. Well, The Hobbit describes him as killing goblins for food. Goblins wear clothes, too. Checkmate. And those clothes are just always wet and drippy and nasty.

- The hair that is wet and drippy and nasty. He’s repeatedly described as having ‘thin, lank hair’. I tried to depict the hair as always wet, or about to be wet, or was recently wet. Gotta get those fissh! The color is just what looked best after trying a few different shades.

- I could have sworn Tolkien mentioned Gollum not having toes at some point. I can’t find the reference anywhere in wikis or the text now, so maybe I’m full of it. However, there IS a mention of a ‘long webby foot’ in The Hobbit, combined with many descriptions of flat feet, so duckfeets it is. Technically, these feet would have toes, but the thick skin between the toes would somewhat obscure that, so I’m covered whether he’s supposed to have toes or not

- Now, the blank, white eyes are just the mental image I’ve had of Gollum ever since I was a kid, and trying anything else didn’t look right to me. I don’t think Tolkien quite intended completely blank eyes like this when he used the descriptor of ‘large pale eyes’. I suspect the intent was a light gray or light blue (like in the Jackson films). But this is what I imagined and wanted to draw. I was picturing blind cave fish. The glowing green is from descriptions in The Hobbit where it does sound as if there is an actual light emitted from Gollum’s eyes- but only sometimes.
In any case, Gollum has been underground for 800 years or something and cannot even bear to see moonlight, so it’s reasonable to say there’s something odd about his eyes...

- On that note, the white-and-pink color scheme is also supposed to evoke cave fish. I’m not a great colorist, but I was attempting to give him that kind of unsettling slimy jelly look.

Other LOTR posts:
Gollum design notes | Sam, The Best Hobbit | Smeagol, The Worst Hobbit | The Best Hobbit vs The Worst Hobbit (not yet available) | Misc, including Merry and Pippin and others (not yet available)

... and there's more in my scraps: www.deviantart.com/itstheblob/…

Description
All typed text in the drawings above is taken from The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, both by J.R.R. Tolkien. These quotations are included here as context for the images, which are meant to be a commentary on the work.

I read the Lord of the Rings for the first time this summer, about 80 years after everyone has already read it. I liked it a lot! I couldn’t get very far into it as a kid. I didn’t have the patience to get through all of the setup.

I did read The Hobbit as a kid. I always had a vivid mental image of Gollum being kind of an amphibian thing, looking something like the cave fishes he eats. (And the descriptions of animal scurrying, flat feet, huge pale eyes, etc. in LOTR only bolstered that image.) I was a little surprised to grow up and find out that apparently, no one else sees Gollum this way. There is a pretty strong consensus (which seems to pre-date the Peter Jackson films - which I also liked a lot-) that Gollum is a stunted ugly goblin Tarzan. Except for Rankin-Bass, who get points for creativity, but lose points for the excessive amount of chill granted to a character who clearly has none.

Since I couldn’t find any illustrations that matched my mental image of Gollum, I tried to set out to depict it myself. I don’t think this is any great work of art, I am no character designer, but it was a fun exercise and I got some lively cartoons out of it.
Some points to note:

- Yes, he is fully clothed. Apparently, that was the intention?

In a manuscript written to guide illustrators to the appearance of his characters, Tolkien explained this by saying that Gollum had pale skin, but wore dark clothes and was often seen in poor light. The Hobbit states he has pockets, in which he keeps a tooth sharpening rock, goblin teeth, wet shells, and a scrap of bat wing. Despite these details, he is generally depicted wearing a loincloth or naked in illustrations and adaptations.
- lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Gollum#Ch…

I’m all for letting overwhelming cultural perception override an author’s original intentions. (And I do mean overwhelming; I could not find a single fully-clothed Gollum in either wiki gallery, excluding pre-ring Smeagol, of course.) However, when I drew the tattered hoodie, I liked the look of the tattered hoodie and kept it. I assume the desire to depict Gollum as naked stems both from his aquatic habitat and the question of: where’s he getting his clothes? Surely, he doesn’t scurry down to the Gondor Wal-Mart and pick out PJs. Well, The Hobbit describes him as killing goblins for food. Goblins wear clothes, too. Checkmate. And those clothes are just always wet and drippy and nasty.

- The hair that is wet and drippy and nasty. He’s repeatedly described as having ‘thin, lank hair’. I tried to depict the hair as always wet, or about to be wet, or was recently wet. Gotta get those fissh! The color is just what looked best after trying a few different shades.

- I could have sworn Tolkien mentioned Gollum not having toes at some point. I can’t find the reference anywhere in wikis or the text now, so maybe I’m full of it. However, there IS a mention of a ‘long webby foot’ in The Hobbit, combined with many descriptions of flat feet, so duckfeets it is. Technically, these feet would have toes, but the thick skin between the toes would somewhat obscure that, so I’m covered whether he’s supposed to have toes or not

- Now, the blank, white eyes are just the mental image I’ve had of Gollum ever since I was a kid, and trying anything else didn’t look right to me. I don’t think Tolkien quite intended completely blank eyes like this when he used the descriptor of ‘large pale eyes’. I suspect the intent was a light gray or light blue (like in the Jackson films). But this is what I imagined and wanted to draw. I was picturing blind cave fish. The glowing green is from descriptions in The Hobbit where it does sound as if there is an actual light emitted from Gollum’s eyes- but only sometimes.
In any case, Gollum has been underground for 800 years or something and cannot even bear to see moonlight, so it’s reasonable to say there’s something odd about his eyes...

- On that note, the white-and-pink color scheme is also supposed to evoke cave fish. I’m not a great colorist, but I was attempting to give him that kind of unsettling slimy jelly look.

Other LOTR posts:
Gollum design notes | Sam, The Best Hobbit | Smeagol, The Worst Hobbit | The Best Hobbit vs The Worst Hobbit (not yet available) | Misc, including Merry and Pippin and others (not yet available)

... and there's more in my scraps: www.deviantart.com/itstheblob/…