Illustrating Tolkien's Roverandom: #1 Rover in the Garden

Well, here he is: Rover, playing in the garden with his yellow ball.

This is the first completed illustration in my attempt to give Tolkien’s Roverandom a few more pictures, at least for my own children, and perhaps for anyone else who would like to read the story with a little more to look at along the way.

(You can read my original post here, where I share about Tolkien’s inspiration behind the story and my desire to illustrate it: How Do You Illustrate a Dog Who’s Been to the Moon and Back? Discover Tolkien’s Roverandom Through Fresh Illustrations.)

Tolkien begins Roverandom with a lovely fairy-tale doorway: “Once upon a time there was a little dog, and his name was Rover.” Then he immediately puts Rover in trouble. Rover is “very small, and very young, or he would have known better.” This begins a tale in which Rover gets into trouble with an old wizard named Artaxerxes (who will be my next illustration). It all has to do with Tolkien telling a fairy tale about his son’s lost toy dog.

Insofar as it has to do with illustrating the scene, Tolkien gives wonderful details: Rover “was very happy playing in the garden in the sunshine with a yellow ball, or he would never have done what he did.” This text largely gives us a world before the trouble with Artaxerxes arrives, who was, by the way, “a nimble plum-gatherer,” which is why I included a plum tree, since it was what attracted him to the garden in the first place. The town is also described as near the sea, which is why I included seagulls.

So, there’s a garden, a ball, sunshine, seagulls, a plum tree, and a puppy too young to know better. I did my best to incorporate all of it into this illustration.

If you remember my original post about this venture, this looks a little different from my first concept of Rover. This is because I drew Rover several times and in several ways, and my family agreed that this was the best version of him because “it feels like you’re in the garden with him.” I agreed, so I decided that this was the one to build around.

My kids seem to have enjoyed seeing Rover come to life on the page, and I hope yours will too. I’ll keep working through the story, marking scenes that seem to ask for a picture, then drawing and sharing them as I go.

If you’re interested, here is the uncolored page you can use as a coloring page for your kids (though it does not include the clouds, since I scanned it before deciding the drawing could use them).

My next illustration will be Old Artaxerxes, ragged coat, green hat, blue feather, pipe, and all.