My initial plan was to spend a year in France, go to some kind of school and learn a bit of French. I went a year in an American college in the outskirts of Strasbourg, but got a glimpse of a real art school, L'Ecole des Arts Decoratifs, and enrolled the following year.

God loves you enough , trusts you enough, to let affliction come into your life to see whether you will exercise the muscles of faith while your physical muscles begin to atrophy.

I have a website because it's an interesting tool, very - and quite unexpectedly - useful for my work. It's become an archive and a fairly complete on-line portfolio, as well as offering an opportunity to write a little.

I initially moved to Switzerland for work on an animated feature film, and have been here ever since.

All in all, Tolkien fans are as varied, remarkable and marvelous as the books and the worlds that they share. They make me feel a little like a Hobbit who glimpses colourful strangers passing but has never left the Shire.

Occasionally projects just take off unexpectedly, sometimes you can work away at sketches and ideas for years before they are published. There are a number of authors I would be eager to illustrate.

Character is power; it makes friends, draws patronage and support and opens the way to wealth, honor and happiness.