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Boromir looks rather short and slim there on the FotR cover. He's supposed to be a big, burly dude. The hobbits look kind of goofy too. The thing that impresses me most about the art is the backgrounds.
I prefer the single-volume edition. I have the 50th version of the book which I'm not sure is in print anymore. Wish I'd have taken better care of my copy :/ Not that I trashed it or anything. Also wish I could find a better picture.
I did a bit of superficial surfing and turned up this discussion, which goes some way toward explaining how the huge Gollum may have come about:
Not that that's the only strange Gollum, by any means; I recall being bewildered by the way Pauline Baynes showed him, in the decorations for her 1970 map:
I tried to produce a closeup detail -- not very successfully:
It's not very clear, but Gollum has odd rings all over his body, making him look like a mummy -- or maybe a grub worm.
I know Tolkien made some corrections on the map itself, before it was published, but I don't know if he saw the illustrations.
That said, she later did some different conceptions of him. And I like much of her other Tolkien work. I don't think these have appeared here yet:
Yeah, looks weird from what I can see. Also, like something is sticking from the top of his head, unless that's supposed to be his other arm. If so, it's at an odd angle.
I'm otherwise a big fan of Baynes' work. I'm surprised there aren't any better scans of that image.
It's been stated that Tolkien generally disliked the Fellowship illustration above this map, and wrote
his reactions to it. We've had some bits of these already, and I'm guessing we've got more, if not all of them, coming in The Nature of Middle-Earth (section "Descriptions of Characters") -- and would not be surprised to see commentary about the "bad guys" below the map.
The History of The Hobbit author claims Tolkien so disliked the top part that he [JRRT] had it removed before giving the map as a gift. If GNOME does indeed publish this, I'll be interested to see if this claim is confirmed.
You're talking about the illustrations at the top, I assume? I wonder what he thought of the "evil" characters at the bottom -- especially Gollum. 😁
BTW, the map itself is a somewhat "elongated" -- and therefore distorted -- version, which as I recall was necessary in order to fit the standard poster format.
I had the Pauline Baynes map on my wall once. It got ruined in an accident involving water and old pipes, but I have "always" wondered (since the womb?) . . . the colouring on the bottom of the Hobbit feet?