ld Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow,
Bright blue his jacket, and his boots are yellow.
None has ever caught him yet, for Tom, he is the master:
His songs are stronger songs, and his feet are faster.
J.R.R.T,The Lord of the Rings, Book One:
The Fellowship of the Ring,
"Fog on the Barrow-Downs"
I have always felt that Tom Bombadill was a rather odd
character in the Lord of the Rings; not only as he is portrayed
but in the whole context. A little out of place so to speak, which
perhaps is a rather inconsiderate remark of someone who stopped
the ring expedition from being a fiasco at it's very beginning. Chris
Tubb at Mithril seem to have a special fondness of this peculiar chap.
No less than 8 miniatures has been design representing Ol' Tom and his
betrothed Goldberry. The above one is M53 from 'The Shirefolk' series.
I put this one on a green hill against the summer sky. Well, a model
of it at least: the shadowbox in which it is placed is no more than 15x15x6 cm.
I think the illusion works quite well, not only in the picture actually, since
the background is curving inwards at the edges which gives it a 'wide-angle' look.
This mini-vignette, 'Tom Bombadil and the Badger-folk'(MS297)
was offered to the members of the Mithril Fellowship as a
membership renewal special. A rather peculiar choice of miniature
to put into production, even as a limited one, since Tom's and the Badgers encounters
are only mentioned briefly and has close to nothing to do with the stories.
The scene is primarily mentioned in 'The Adventures of Tom Bombadil':
"Out came Badger-brock with his snowy forehead
and his dark blinking eyes. In the hill he quarried
with his wife and many sons. By the coat they caught him,
pulled him inside their earth, down their tunnels brought him.
Inside their secret house, there they sat a-mumbling:
"Ho, Tom Bombadil! Where have you come tumbling,
bursting in the front door? Badger-folk have caught you.
You'll never find it out, the way that we have brought you!"
"Now, old Badger-brock, do you hear me talking?
You show me out at once! I must be a-walking.
Show me to your backdoor under briar-roses;
then clean grimy paws, wipe your earthy noses!
Go back to sleep again on your straw pillow,
like fair Goldberry and Old Man Willow!"
I suspect
it might be for that very reason it was made and I certainly know it was for
that very reason I promptly made a little diorama out of it, one of my first ones actually.
It was quite easy to make; a square block of styrofoam glued to a thin piece of plywood.
A hollow was roughly cut out and the whole thing was then generously covered in plaster
spackling. I wanted it to look like cross cut from the ground below, so I painted the whole
thing in dark, moist earth colors and dressed the top with twigs, pebbles and static grass.
As I write this and look at the picture I know what I wish I had done more: pale roots
dangling from the ceiling of the badger's lair. Well, some day I might take me some time and
add that.
This close up of the diorama above I included to use
as an example of the phenomenon of 'scale-distance'.
The closest one can focus on a miniature is about 10 cm (5'') from the eyes.
At that distance a 32mm miniature will appear as large as a real
person at about 7m (20'). That means that any detail should be
painted as if seen from this distance. This is the rationale for not
painting eye-whites on small scale miniature, but it is also the guideline
for what details to spent time on. What you can't see on the guy across
the street, so to speak, should not be painted in. This has consequences when you are shooting pictures to. As you probably can see in the shot
to the left, pictures that shows the miniatures larger than they would
appear at 10 cm from your eye will often show up flaws and brush
strokes. This does not have to be a problem, sometimes the paint job is up to
scratch, sometimes good lighting takes care of it and you might even have special
reasons to show extreme close-ups.
As we have taken different photos, I have come to think that the ones showing the
whole diorama works best, not the partials and close-ups where you try to make the
miniatures look as if they were real people. It won't quite work anyway.
Compare the three shots at this page. Isn't the one showing the whole diorama
against the well lit blue background the most pleasing to the eye? I think so at
least, but it might be because I get to show what I have done: a diorama, not some
special effect mock up.
ld Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow,![[Click for a larger image]](barrowfull200.jpg){kind=link}