Hey, interesting thing to share,
Brinn!
I must say, it is really interesting to see all of these next to each other - the same scene over and over again in different interpretations. Of course, often many of them are very similar to each other, but the more interesting to me are some of the more "original" ones. If it came to those I like the most, however, I think unfortunately often the most original ones lack the artistic quality, or are in some way "unfinished" (i.e.: I mean that their potential is not used so well as it possibly could).
One of them is for example this one by
Alan Dyson - I liked it on first sight, the idea of being only faced by the Nazgul and the Nazgul being present there only as a shadow. Maybe if the shadow was made more menacing... similar thing goes in this one by
Dagmara Matuszak, I like the fact that the WK is there only as the eyes, basically, rather "by-the-way".
Quite specific is
John Hodgson's, I think the characters are quite ugly, but I like the sort of "set-up" of the picture, also with the Eye being present. Again: I can think of so much more that could have been made out of this...
Of those
Brinn had pointed out, I quite like them too, mostly, especially I think once again
Baracchi's is quite interesting, in the sense that it is almost the only one where the WK is
smaller (in terms of how much space it takes on the picture; or also
lower) than Éowyn. At least on first sight it sort of struck me, now that I am looking at it for severalth time, it isn't so interesting anymore.
I like these for the style, and they are quite beautiful:
Erin Kelso (yet another interesting idea) and
Herman Lau.
Those which I simply "like", as in, simply "aesthetically nice", I would say these:
Diego de Almeida,
Joshua Kratochvil,
Rob Sample, and possibly
Vuk Kostic. And I really like
David moonchild Demaret's, especially the Nazgul's eyes. Really well done.
Generally, I think there are many nice ones, but many of them fall into the "color vs. color" scheme (which is not necessarily bad, but it depends how well it's done) or "yet another way to picture a dragon" scheme (which I don't like at all. It is not supposed to be an illustration for "Dragon" entry into Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual v. 4.5, but "Creature of an Older World").
As a final note, I don't like so much the rest of the picture of
Sands Gonzaga as a whole (or, the Nazgul is fine, but Éowyn looks slightly out of
his mind, for that matter), but the eyes (??!) on the Nazgul's cloak (?!?) are really cool. Otherwise, when I look at the picture, I have to think "Hashirama vs. Madara" (for those who know what I am talking about).