Here's an incredibly cool and revealing collection of drawings done by J.R.R. Tolkien showing us his personal vision of what Middle Earth in The Hobbit looks like. The images you see here are part of a book being released called The Art of the Hobbit, which celebrates the 75th anniversary of the book's publication showing off Tolkien's never-before-seen original illustrations.

According to The Guardian:

"When HarperCollins began preparing for the book's 75th anniversary next year, the publisher discovered Tolkien had actually created more than 100 illustrations, which lay buried in his archive at the Bodleian Library in Oxford and were only recently digitised.

The publisher of the book David Brawn had this to say about the book and what it includes...

It includes his conceptual sketches for the cover design, a couple of early versions of the maps and pages where he's experimenting with the runic forms, as well as a couple of manuscript pages. It shows that Tolkien's creativity went beyond the writing, that it was a fully thought out conception. When he writes about the hobbit hole ["In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort"], he's designed it as well. And by doing that, it makes his description more vivid ... Tolkien was an accomplished amateur artist. He was a great admirer of Arthur Rackham and you can see a little bit of that style coming through.

It's really awesome to see what Tolkien was seeing in his head whenhe was writing these classic novels. Check out the art below and tell us what you think!