Keep practising! Draw every day, don't give up and remember that to produce anything really worthwhile takes a long time.

I often look at photographs of faces in my reference collection to establish the look I'm after. I don't set out to make a character resemble anyone in particular, but sometimes it just happens that they do.

Arthur Rackham, Alphonse Mucha, Alan Lee, Norman Rockwell, Auguste Rodin, Mike Mignola, Humberto Ramos, Gustav Klimt, Jamie Hewlett, J.W. Waterhouse...

This is my current top ten, but there are loads more that I think are brilliant. I have a big collection of art books and I look at them all the time. Better than anything is getting out to visit galleries and exhibitions it's great to see the paintings 'in the flesh'.

These days I work in acrylics or oils on illustration board or watercolour paper. I no longer use an airbrush and I still have not succumbed to the lures of digital manipulation. I always use a sharp H, F, H.B. or B pencil.

I was always blessed with an over-active imagination, not great when you are four and you are convinced there are dinosaurs in the hall in the middle of the night.

The natural world is a constant source of inspiration for me, I try to go for a walk every day in the countryside.

I enjoy watching films to see how other people have realised characters and environments and I read lots of reference books on all sorts of things.

If I am doing a book jacket, I tend to use the dimensions 520 x 775mm.

Pencil drawings are usually produced on A4 or A3 cartridge paper.

Although occasionally I get self indulgent and do something much, much bigger.

As often as possible...