Daydreaming with pencil and paper is a respectable form of meditation.

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

I have been illustrating Tolkien's books ever since I first read them, long before illustration became my profession.

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

Daydreaming with pencil and paper is a respectable form of meditation.

More often than not, however, the person who flatly states 'Elves aren't like that!' is hard pressed to describe how they really look.... as if Tolkien has summoned archetypes from so deep in our minds that we can only recall them incompletely.

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.