I have time for only the quickest of posts today, so I'd like use that time to direct your attention to a lovely BBC piece on my friend and neighbor Alan Lee: "How Do You Draw Tolkien's World?" -- in which he speaks about the newest Tolkien volume, Beren and Lúthien, among other things.

"I first encountered  The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings when I was eighteen," Alan told me once (for an article I wrote some years ago). "It felt as though Tolkien had taken every element I'd ever want in a story and woven them into one huge, seamless narrative. And, even more important for me, he had created a place -- a vast, beautiful, awesome landscape -- which lingered in the mind long after the protagonists had finished their battles and gone their separate ways."

Yes, that's it exactly.

Art above, by Alan Lee: The cover painting for Beren and Lúthien; and an unrelated drawing, "Fairies of the wood," that I particularly love. All rights reserved by the artist.