As conceptual designer for the films, it was Alan’s job to help create the distinctive “look” of Middle Earth. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, as well as The Hobbit.įor six years, however, book projects were set aside while he worked in New Zealand on Peter Jackson’s film trilogy, The Lord of the Rings. At the suggestion of Ian Ballantine (the legendary American publisher), Alan, Brian and the designer David Larkin created the book Faeries, inspired by the Dartmoor countryside and European fairy lore.Īmongst other works Alan has also illustrated The Mabinogion, Castles, Joan Aiken’s the Moon’s Revenge, The Mirrorstone, with Michael Palin and Richard Seymour, Merlin Dreams by Peter Dickinson, and Rosemary Sutcliff’s Black Ships Before Troy: The Story of the Illiad (winner of the prestigious Kate Greenaway Award), and the centenary edition of J.R.R. Alan worked as an illustrator in London until the mid-1970s, when he moved to Dartmoor with fellow-artists Marja Lee Kruÿt and Brian Froud. Enchanted by myth and folklore from an early age, he gravitated toward the field of book illustration - inspired by Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac, master illustrators of the early twentieth century. Home of Radagast the BrownĪlan Lee was born and raised in London, where he studied graphic design.
My use of the phrase “half a dozen” is to help you age my remains. I hope you haven’t removed the oak tree which was planted above my grave, but if you have I trust that you will fashion it into something useful or beautiful, and that you will plant at least half a dozen saplings to replace it. I could contemplate my life’s choices while losing myself in the maze of lines and symbols, and being reminded of the awe-inspiring heights of skill and imagination that mortals are capable of. This, and his “Melancholia”, had a powerful and formative influence on me. I would take a copy of Albretch Durer’s engraving, “Knight, Death and the Devil”. I’ve always had a fascination for printing processes my first job was in a large printing company and I loved watching those Heidelbergs and Rotary presses in action – and I have an etching press.
If I were interred with one piece of art it would have to be a print as I would hate to deprive the living of any objects that may bring joy or solace. ‘Knight, Death and Devil’, Albrecht Dürer, engraving, 1513
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