Alan and Shawn welcome John Howe to the Prancing Pony Podcast! Over the past several decades John has established himself as one of the most enduringly popular Middle-earth artists, and his work has appeared in numerous books and calendars (including the Tolkien Calendar 2021), and earned him a role as a conceptual artist for Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings movies. We talk to him about artistic inspiration, capturing reality through fantasy, and his new not-a-how-to book, John Howe’s Ultimate Fantasy Art Academy.