During the winter when the weather is too poor to work outside, I do use drawings and photographs, but I change my work so it is not just a time and place study.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I've just finished my 20th book this past year and I'm working on my 21st book about the Middle East right now that I'll finish this year. And I get up early in the morning and when I get tired of the computer and tired of doing research, I walk 20 steps out to my woodshop and I either build furniture or paint paintings. I'm an artist too.
While in college, I used to get my ideas from photographs in 'National Geographic.' I started painting palm trees and motorboats.
When I'm drawing, I only do that at home, really, at my drawing table. But writing I could do in other places. So I've written in airports, in hotels, different places.
When I'm drawing, I'm drawing with the light, being completely open and creative. I can't draw in the evening. I need light and I need warmth if it is a summer thing, and I need cold if it is a winter collection. The good thing is that I have houses to go to whenever I'm working. I draw according to the place.
I knew that you couldn't make a living simply writing about the outdoors, so I made an effort from the beginning of my freelance career to write about other subjects.
I have always enjoyed drawing and painting but I don't always find the time to do much these days.
I worked a little as a messenger on a bicycle and then decided to study photography and film.
I'm always taking pictures and travelling with a camera and have so many photos that I've done a book.
I always collect images, maybe because I was working with historic material - but even if I were working with contemporary material, I would do the same thing. I keep a kind of index of them while I'm working. I find them incredibly useful, not so much to illustrate a time, but to give some sense of the feeling of a time.
My job is to make images and leave the decision-making and conclusion-drawing to other people.