What\u2019s your favorite plant from Middle-earth and why?<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\nI love the Mallorn trees (depicted on the cover), and what they represent. As a child, Mallorn trees represented this mystical, untouched world, and were the symbol for elves and knowledge and the ancient world. I loved everything about the wood elves, and I often pretended the woods around our house was the Galadriel forest. Alone deep in the woods, I still often get this weird feeling like there is an unseen force. I don\u2019t know how else to translate it, but I can feel it.<\/p>\n
My favorite plant to illustrate for the book was the linden tree because picturing the silhouettes of the hobbits entwined in Aragorn\u2019s story as they await the attack of the Black Riders is both fun and visually enchanting.<\/p>\n
What has been the most interesting part of illustrating Middle-earth?<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\nI remember watching an episode of the X-Files<\/em> as a kid that takes\u00a0place in Ecuador, and my dad told me as a brief aside that those plants were native to the L.A. area \u2014 not the jungles of South America. It completely sucked me out of the narrative. After working on this book, I finally understand our cultural blindness to plants. People don\u2019t really pay attention to how a pine tree\u2019s branches are different from a fir tree\u2019s, and before this project I didn\u2019t either. Things that used to feel needlessly descriptive now enrich my imagination.<\/p>\n[divider][\/divider]<\/p>\n
[photo id=”11627″ title=”Judd-DrawingMiddleEarth-print” alt=”” position=”right” width=”546px”][\/photo]<\/p>\n