1. The first style I'm considering is based on the posters for The Hobbit movie. I would create a similar looking portrait to this poster of Gandalf for J.R.R. Tolkien with minimal color (white and brown, with a sepia tone), and with minimal molding, just using lines to create the portrait in a style that looks drawn on a manuscript. It relates to Tolkien because it would like look a sketch that he might have made of a character while working on concept images for his books.
(First image source: http://www.nndb.com/people/511/000022445/)
(Second image source: http://thehobbitmovieblog.blogspot.com/2012_10_01_archive.html)
2. My second style idea is to create a portrait of Tolkien using text from one of his books. I would make it in the style of the work of Ralph Ueltzhoeffer, much like this work from 2009 titled "Identity."
(http://www.escapeintolife.com/showcase/art-digital-age-text-portraits/)
3. My third idea is to create a portrait that looks like a hand-drawn pencil portrait. This would relate to Tolkien as a creator of his own art. I would create it in black and white (or greyscale) with a type of sketchy quality.
4. The fourth idea I have is making a portrait that looks like a Lord of the Rings movie poster. This would be to recognize the iconic status J.R.R. Tolkien has gained because of the wildly popular movies that were based on his books. I would create his portrait in color, with a landscape in the back, and text across the front with his name.
(http://www.movieposter.com/q/Lord+of+the+Rings:+The+Fellowship+of+the+Ring_posters.html)
5. The fifth idea I have is creating a portrait that looks like it's made out of the smoke that's coming out of Tolkien's pipe. So the pipe would be created in color, probably with the pen tool and with fills, and then the rest of the piece would be transparent gray wispyness that looked like smoke. Tolkien smoked a pipe and many of his characters did as well. I was inspired by the scene in the LOTR movies where Bilbo and Gandalf are smoking together and creating images out of their smoke rings.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v32/L0TRxL0VE/Graphics/nighttoremember.jpg)
6. My sixth idea is to create a type of Art Nouveau portrait of Tolkien. The Art Nouveau movement of the turn of the century influenced Tolkien in his youth. Art and metalworking and jewelry is extensively described in his books. Nature, beauty, and organic life are themes that flow through his works and especially characterize the elves that he created. I would model my portrait after the work of Alphonse Mucha, much like this image, title "The Blonde" from 1897. Of course, I would make it less feminine, but I would keep the same elaborate ornamentation and patterning.
(http://www.artcyclopedia.com/images/Mucha.jpg)
7. My seventh style idea is to create a portrait the flows out the script of J.R.R. Tolkien's name. His name would be at the bottom of the artboard, in connected lettering, and the lines would flow up to create a portrait made just of lines. A contour portrait of sorts, but one that looks like it was drawn with pen and ink.
8. My eighth style idea is to illustrate what looks like a watercolor portrait of Tolkien. This would be modeled after some of the illustration in some editions of his books.
9. The ninth idea I've considered is turning Tolkien into a cartoon. I would use the animated Lord of the Rings cartoon movies as my inspiration because they were the first movies created to tell the story of the epic books. This would be one of the more simple styles because it wouldn't take a lot of modeling and lines, but more shapes and fills.
(http://pluckyoutoo.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/hobbit2.jpg)
10. The tenth idea I thought of was rendering a life-like vector portrait of J.R.R. Tolkien to bring his character to life again, just as he brought all of the characters in his books to life through his portrayals of them. I would execute it much like this vector portrait of Emma Watson.
(http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2010/202/d/9/Vector_Portrait___Amma_Watson_by_AryaInk.png)
