Jonathan Barry, Artist

I've been a professional artist for about 15 years. Before I went out on my own, I worked in animation for Universal in London. I hated that. The artists had no creative input at all. We were just donkeys.

When i was a child, a teacher read us The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I just fell in love with it, but most especially I fell in love with the illustrations. They were by a lady called Pauline Baynes. Pauline died recently, aged 86. I'd got to know her in the last seven years. She was my mentor.

One of the pleasures of being commissioned to illustrate the Wordsworth Classics is that I'm seeing all these long-forgotten horror novels which have been out of print for 80 or 90 years being re-issued. I'm mad about horror literature. I run a Gothic book club in Dublin. My friends and I get together once a month and discuss ghost stories. We don't dress up.

Sheridan le fanu wrote the greatest vampire story ever, Carmilla, which is about a lesbian vampire. It was very risqué for its time. Bram Stoker read it, and it inspired Dracula, but it's a far better book than Dracula.

That said, I'm crazy about Dracula. I travelled to Transylvania in 1991 and visited all the major sites associated with Vlad the Impaler, who the character of Dracula was based on. His tomb is in a tiny monastery on a tiny island in the middle of a lake.

I wilfully avoided the clichés when it came to illustrating my own Dracula. That red-lined cape and slicked-back hair thing is a cinematic invention. If you read the novel, he is described as wearing a tight-fitting grey tunic, with buttons on it. He also has a moustache. My Dracula has a Michael Heseltine haircut.

When i'm painting any famous character, I use my family and friends as models. It gives them a bit of immortality. I've just done a series of Sherlock Holmes paintings for Wordsworth, and my mates Vinny and Gary are Holmes and Watson.

Prints of Jonathan Barry's paintings are on sale in Eason's bookshop, O'Connell Street, Dublin, and at the Dublin Writers' Museum