I have a very clear memory of my first encounter with myth, sitting in a mobile library and travelling, at the same time, with Theseus on the road to Athens. By the time we’d met,...

A lot of excellent illustrators are working at the moment–especially in fantasy and children’s books. It is exciting also to see graphic artists such as Dave McKean, in his film Mirrormask, moving between different media....

I like to work in watercolor, with as little under-drawing as I can get away with. I like the unpredictability of a medium which is affected as much by humidity, gravity, the way that heavier...

I’ve been strongly influenced, in technique as well as subject matter, by some of the early 20th-century book illustrators — Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac in particular, Burne-Jones and other Pre-Raphaelites, and the Arts-&-Crafts movement...

When I draw something, I try to build some kind of history into it. Drawing an object that has a certain amount of wear and tear or rust; or a tree that is damaged. I...

I keep drawing the trees, the rocks, the river, I’m still learning how to see them; I’m still discovering how to render their forms. I will spend a lifetime doing that. Maybe someday I’ll get...

I spend as much time as I can sketching from nature, Dartmoor contains such a rich variety of landscape, as many boulders, foaming rivers and twisted trees as my heart could ever desire. . ....

When I started to draw, most of my influences were from other painters and illustrators, so I was drawing landscape at second hand, really. The trees were Rackham trees, or trees that I had seen...

The power of both myth and art is this magical ability to open doors, to make connections — not only between us and the natural world, but between us and the rest of humanity. Myths...

I’m drawn to characters who bear similarities to the protagonists in myths and legends. (…)