Alan Lee Photo: Chen Xia/GT

Illustrations by Alan Lee Photos: Courtesy of Beijing Century Wenjing Culture and Media

Illustrations by Alan Lee Photo: Courtesy of Beijing Century Wenjing Culture and Media

"There are other authors who have written within the imagined world, but Tolkien has the gift for description. He just brought all to life, and for the time I was reading it, I was totally in Middle-Earth, walking around seeing people, looking at trees and imagining being local not foreign. It transformed to a country around me," said Alan Lee, a die-hard fan of British writer J. R. R. Tolkien, the author who left behind a treasure of fantasy books such as The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

Lee is much more fortunate than many other fans of Tolkien as he was invited by publisher HarperCollins to draw the illustrations for the centenary edition of The Lord of the Rings trilogy in 1992 and the 60th anniversary edition of The Hobbit in 1997, which led to his later participation as a concept artist for the film versions of both works. In 2004, he shared an Academy Award with two other artists for Best Art Direction for the third film in The Lord of the Rings series.

Recently Lee's book The Lord of the Rings Sketchbook, in which he looks back at his experiences working on both the books and films, has been translated to Chinese and published by Beijing Century Wenjing Culture and Media. To promote the new book, the 68-year-old paid his first visit to China to attend the Shanghai Book Fair.

Drawing destiny

"I remember when I read my first myth. I was about 7 or 8 years old. It was in a mobile library - a library in a van that came around to houses - and I pulled this book out. It was called Bulfinch's Mythology, written by Thomas Bulfinch in the 19th century," recalled Lee, who totally lost himself in the magical and dramatic story of a man being torn in half by a giant and later began to read everything he could about legends and mythology.

"The more I got into the medieval world, with the knights and the Vikings, they kind of took over, because things were more dramatic and more romantic. There are fantastic elements as dragons, giants and dwarves and all kind of great emotions are played through in this beautiful imagined landscape," said Lee, explaining that he decided to become an illustrator at the age of 15.

"But when I went to art school I kind of lost my track a little bit, because I became more interested in ideas, in contemporary art, sculpture," Lee said, explaining that he later left art school and went to work in a cemetery filling in graves and cutting grass.

"It was kind of like getting back to nature."

However, The Lord of the Rings entered and lightened up the world of the graveyard worker and one year later, Lee went to study graphic design and illustration at Ealing Art College.

Before he was invited to work on the centenary edition of The Lord of the Rings, he had already won second place at the science fiction and fantasy Locus Awards for Best Art Book with Faeries in 1978 and won a Chesley Award for Best Interior Illustration with Merlin Dreams in 1988.

Inspiration from home

It was in his cottage at Dartmoor where Lee created the magnificent drawings for The Lord of the Rings in 1992. The place offered him endless inspiration to give Tolkien's words solid visual form.

"It's an amazing landscape there. You walk on the moor. There are constructions four or five thousand years old, stone circles and remains of villages. And all around it you've got forests and rivers," described Lee, who has been living there for 40 years.

"That environment became very important to me. I think everything I draw kind of came from somewhere in that landscape." Lee told the Global Times.

"I spend a lot time wandering around the woods and the rivers are very beautiful as well. I love to sit by the riverside at dusk and just draw until it's too dark to draw. I can't see what I've done before I arrive home. It is wonderful. All that material that I take in and absorb will come out in the drawings I do."

Thanks to his magnificent job on the book, Lee was invited by New Zealander film director Peter Jackson to help guide The Lord of the Rings trilogy in 1998. Lee originally thought he would spend only six months in New Zealand, but ended up staying for six years working on the trilogy, which later earned 30 Academy Award nominations and won 17 of them.

Switching roles

The film production team literally built almost everything that Lee painted, ranging from architecture to furniture, gardens and different armor, swords, crowns and other accessories used by different characters.

"I really enjoyed the aspect of working in collaboration with lots of people, particularly when they are enthusiastic, because I find it very exciting to see that people are as enthusiastic about what they're doing as I am. I just find it very thrilling," said Lee. The artist made about 2,500 sketches for the film trilogy and later spent another six years on The Hobbit trilogy in New Zealand.

"I find it quite hard to do portrait shaped drawings now that I've started to think in this kind of shape," the illustrator said while framing a wide screen rectangle with his fingers, explaining how his experience working on the films would influence his work in the future.

"So my landscapes are becoming much wider, it's a little bit similar to old Chinese scroll painting," joked Lee.

Despite the fact that Tolkien's works have played a significant part in Lee's career and The Lord of the Rings remain one of his favorite stories, the illustrator told the Global Times that he has always looked for more variety in his career.

Besides Tolkien's stories, Lee has also illustrated retellings of classics for young people, such as The Wanderings of Odysseus, a retelling of The Odyssey,  and Black Ships before Troy, a retelling of his other favorite story The Iliad.

He is also writing some original stories for himself. "I'm working on about three ideas for books, and one of them is basically a medieval story, but it's a medieval world in the future. The world is changed so much that it has gone back to a medieval state, so it will contain a lot of elements from legends, mythology, and history, but projected into the future," said Lee.