May 20, 2003

Re: lilly's Inquiry on Discovering LotR
Danny

I wouldn't claim to know too much about LOTR, but I am pretty familiar with the books. Anyway, I suppose I will answer your question about how I became such a fan of the books. My father used to read The Hobbit to me before I would go to bed when I was a kid. I loved his Gollum impersonation and loved the whole book. That got me interested in Tolkien at a young age. I read The Hobbit for myself when I was nine and loved it. When I was around 10 and a half I started Lord of the Rings. It was a challenge for me at that age, but I read each book in one month. Since then I have read the series somewhere around 8 times and am working on it in Spanish. I never intended it to pull me in like that, but every time I start the series I find myself done with it in about three weeks. A large part of my inspiration has been my love of art. I love to illustrate Tolkien (inspired by John Howe, Allan Lee, Ted Nasmith and others) and have grown up as an artist in my attempts to illustrate that world. The initial attempts are pretty feeble, though my later paintings are better. For me reading became part of my artistic exploration and my art became part of the literary exploration. BTW you can see my LOTR illustrations at www.soulscapes.net. So that is my story.

p.s. Does anyone know how to get the posts we have to have line breaks in them? I have tried with the html tag but the last few times I tried it didn't work. If it does now I will feel dumb. Anyway that is why all my posts are one long paragraph.