Did Wells ever do an illustration of the fighting machines?

I have seen dozens and dozens of depictions of the Martian tripods, and all of them seem to be different, making it difficult for me to imagine what Wells actually intended the fighting machines to look like. This begs the question, "Did Wells ever do any sketches or drawings of what he himself thought the tripods looked like?"

I haven't found any tripods done by Wells, but there is a drawing done by him of what he thought the Martians looked like. And, believe me, if you saw it you would laugh yourself silly. It was apparently done at the bottom of a letter he had written to someone. All that it is is a globe shaped head with a curious "o" shaped mouth, and some puny tenticles. Wells himself confesses that he is no artist, but this thing is far removed from what he has in the book.
After seeing many of the multitudinous tripod renderings myself, I agree with you that no one has really even come very close to what Wells describes. To show them ' barreling along like a milkstool tilted on it's side ' or as ' boilers on stilts ' is quite vague in either case, and thus open to wide interpretation. However, none of the versions I have seen are particularly frightening, although the first appearance of the one in the Speilberg film is really awesome, however absurd his storyline makes the rest of the film.
It seems to me, upon a fresh read of WOTW, that it would be very easy to follow the book and at least try to do the 'pods the way they should. With the Pendragon 'authenitc' fiasco of a few of years ago now firmly established as arguably the worst film ever made, it is unlikely that any major studio would want to risk putting up the many millions of $$$ that would be required to do the book justice.
I found the Pendragon tripods interesting, and one or two scenes with them are even outstanding, but they too are far from what Wells had in mind.

The most recent film version of it seemed to be a really, well, modernised version of how we would expect the pods to be if we were to encounter them now.

Whenever I think of them I always imagine the one they used in Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of War Of The Worlds.