For more than 20 years, Spanish master pastelist Rubén Belloso Adorna has championed the often overlooked art of pastel painting: an art that he says combines the best of drawing and painting.
Throughout those years, Belloso Adorna took the typical route of a traditional artist, winning awards in international art competitions, holding museum exhibitions, and displaying his work alongside the likes of French pastel great Maurice Quentin La Tour (1704-1788), known as the “Prince of Pastel.”
People often mistake Belloso Adorna’s magical pastel paintings for oil paintings. Yet, he’s determined to revive the once-revered art of pastel painting—and he’s making great progress.
Falling in Love With Pastel
Belloso Adorna fell in love with pastel painting in 2003, when he was 17 years old. His first pastel portrait was of Gollum.Although he admits his early forays were disastrous, his passion for pastels propelled him to persevere and teach himself.
Belloso Adorna teaches pastel painting masterclasses in Seville, Spain, where he is based, and across Europe, hoping to instill his love for this underused medium in others. In 2014, along with his Italian pastelist friends, he founded the Association of Italian Pastelists.
Ruben’s Art, Like a Ring, Has Come Full Circle
Belloso Adorna is inspired by many great artists. He greatly admires Caravaggio’s dramatic paintings, Norman Rockwell’s impressive storytelling and expressive characters, Rembrandt’s exquisite rendering of gestures and his keen eye for the play of light, and William Bouguereau’s ability to portray the human figure with naturalistic flair. Last year, he spent seven months recreating what he believes is one of the masterpieces of history painting: Bouguereau’s “The Birth of Venus.”Often, Belloso Adorna’s own lifelike paintings offer a glimpse into a Greek myth, a biblical tale, or even a faraway fairy tale. Many of his own ethereal compositions originate in his everyday life. An idea could come to him just as easily from visiting an art exhibition or a theater’s costume shop as it could from a walk or watching a movie. In September 2025, inspiration struck when he attended San Diego Comic-Con® Málaga, a popular culture convention. It was the first time he’d visited such an event and he loved it. “I met wonderful, very passionate people,” he said.
Comic-Con® felt like entering an exciting new world that inspired him to paint something different, something cinema-related—and what better subject to paint than his favorite movie trilogy: “The Lord of the Rings” (LOTR).
Belloso Adorna grew up watching Peter Jackson’s LOTR, and he later read Tolkien’s books; both inspire him. But he admits: “It’s very hard to think of Gandalf or Frodo without immediately picturing actors like Ian McKellen or Elijah Wood, among other characters who were masterfully portrayed in Peter Jackson’s films.”
Painting Frame by Frame
Belloso Adorna typically relies on photographs, using family or friends as models, in his artistic process. He thinks about the emotion to be conveyed and the best model to express it. He emphasizes the natural light illuminating the painting, adjusting the timing of his photoshoot accordingly.These photo sessions can take hours. One shoot alone produces hundreds, sometimes thousands of images that he uses to create the best composition for a painting.
For his LOTR series, Belloso Adorna adapted this process. Painting from 25-year-old movie frames was, he says, a headache that pushed his abilities to the limit like never before.
He meticulously studied each frame, selecting favored elements for the final painting. One frame might have excellent light, another might convey the perfect facial expression, and yet another might have just the right hand gestures he’s looking for. “I’ve ended up using hundreds of different frames and photographs to complete a single painting. It’s a puzzle that pushes you to the limit, but the satisfaction of pulling it off is immense,” he said.
He completed the nine Fellowship of the Ring portraits first, which took around five months. Then he set his sights on capturing scenes of Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) foretelling Frodo’s future in “The Mirror,” Arwen (Liv Tyler) riding to Rivendell and her mortality in “The Evenstar’s Journey,” Saruman the White (Christopher Lee) wielding his staff in “To War,” and Boromir (Sean Bean), Gandalf (Ian McKellen), and Legolas (Orlando Bloom) entering the Mines of Moria in “The Breath of the Deep.”
While painting the LOTR series, Belloso Adorna realized that the trilogy had inspired everything he had painted throughout the decades. He’s now painting more LOTR adventures.
Legendary Pastel Painting
While he’s grateful for the traditional art world, he finds it very cold. It stands in stark contrast to his new LOTR series, which brings him “in fellowship with the millions of enthusiastic people who love cinema and who have these characters deeply rooted in their lives.”“The reception to this new series of paintings has been extraordinary,” he said. “I’m particularly thrilled by the passion it sparks in people to see their childhood heroes or their favorite movie characters brought to life on paper. It’s something that makes me want to delve deeper into this world.”
Wētā Workshop will soon release limited edition art prints of Belloso Adorna’s LOTR paintings. He’s thrilled: “It is both a source of pride and a great responsibility to be part of this wonderful family that is Wētā, filled with world-class artists … who were indispensable in bringing J.R.R. Tolkien’s work to the big screen under Peter Jackson’s direction.”
Just like Peter Jackson’s LOTR trilogy brought Tolkien’s Middle-earth to the masses, Belloso Adorna’s LOTR pastel paintings just might revive this once-revered art.
