From the time I was very young and first took up drawing, the primary purpose of my artwork has been illustration, the creation of visual images to accompany stories I read or heard.  This hobby was pursued in earnest when I became involved in science fiction fandom and began creating work for sale at convention art shows; it very nearly became a burden when I began publishing my fanzine and had a terrible time finding artists willing to do illustrations to accompany the stories being published.  To some degree, my craft suffered under this need to produce a great volume of work under duress, but in other ways, it helped hone some of my skills with pen and ink, since the reproduction methods most cheaply available at the time required plain black-and-white.  My favorite and best medium remains colored pencil on illustration board.