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

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.

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.

Information and inspiration are everywhere... history, art, architecture, everything an illustrator needs. Europe is, after all, the land that has generated most of the enduring myths and legends of Western culture.

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.

What can make your work interesting is as much who you are, as how you draw.

Drawing must seek for interest, not for admiration. Because admiration wears quickly.