“Just where the path seemed to end, rose a great rock, quite overgrown with shrubs and creeping plants, some of them in full and splendid blossom: these almost concealed an opening in the rock, into which the path appeared to lead. I entered, thirsting for the shade which it promised. What was my delight to find a rocky cell, all the angles rounded away with rich moss, and every ledge and projection crowded with lovely ferns, the variety of whose forms, and groupings, and shades wrought in me like a poem; for such a harmony could not exist, except they all consented to some one end! A little well of the clearest water filled a mossy hollow in one corner. I drank, and felt as if I knew what the elixir of life must be; then threw myself on a mossy mound that lay like a couch along the inner end. Here I lay in a delicious reverie for some time.

“I took my knife and removed the moss from a part of the block on which I had been lying; when, to my surprise, I found it more like alabaster than ordinary marble. The ray of sunlight had now reached the spot I had cleared, and under its lustre the alabaster revealed its usual slight transparency when polished; and I observed that the transparency seemed to have a definite limit, and to end upon an opaque body like the more solid, white marble. One revelation after another produced the entrancing conviction, that under the crust of alabaster lay a dimly visible form in marble. I saw before me with sufficient plainness—though at the same time with considerable indistinctness—a block of pure alabaster enclosing the form, apparently in marble, of a reposing woman. She lay on one side, with her hand under her cheek, and her face towards me.

“‘Who can tell but this cave may be the home of Marble, and this, essential Marble—that spirit of marble which, present throughout, makes it capable of being moulded into any form? Then if she should awake! But how to awake her?’”

— Phantastes, by George MacDonald

September 1, 2021

“Beyond them was a wide level space, as though the floor of a great hall had been cut in the side of the hill…, and along each wall stood an aisle of trees.… At the far end the rock-wall was sheer, but at the bottom it had been hollowed back into a shallow bay with an arched roof: the only roof of the wall, save the branches of the trees…. A little stream … fell tinkling down the sheer face of the wall, pouring in silver drops, like a fine curtain in front of the arched bay.

“Treebeard lifted two great vessels and stood them on the table. They seemed to be filled with water, but he held his hands over them, and immediately they began to glow, one with a golden and the other with a rich green light;… Looking back, the hobbit saw that the trees in the court had also begun to glow … until every leaf was edged with light: some green, some gold, some red as copper.”
— The Lord of the Rings, Book III, Chapter 4: Treebeard

October 22, 2020

This is the reverse of my Cwm Waterfall image, this time from behind the waterfall (and it's late summer rather than spring). This perspective was inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien's description from the chapter "The Window on the West" in The Lord of the Rings.

“They stood on a wet floor of polished stone, the doorstep, as it were, of a rough-hewn gate of rock opening dark behind them. But in front a thin veil of water was hung, so near that Frodo could have put an outstretched arm into it. It faced westward. The level shafts of the setting sun behind beat upon it, and the red light was broken into many flickering beams of ever-changing colour. It was as if they stood at the window of some elven-tower, curtained with threaded jewels of silver and gold, and ruby, sapphire and amethyst, all kindled with an unconsuming fire.”

September 7, 2018

This is a night version of one of my favorite scenes—Glittering Caves of Aglarond

“Immeasurable halls, filled with an everlasting music of water that tinkles into pools. Gems and crystals and veins of precious ore glint in the polished walls; and the light glows through folded marbles, shell-like, translucent as the living hand of Queen Galadriel. There are columns of white and saffron and dawn-rose, fluted and twisted into dreamlike form, they spring up from many-colored floors to meet the glistening pendants of the roof; wings, ropes, curtains fine as frozen clouds; spears, banners, pinnacles of suspended palaces! Still lakes mirror them; a glimmering world looks up from dark pools covered with clear glass.”
—The Lord of the Rings, Book III, Chapter 8

October 13, 2017

“Immeasurable halls, filled with an everlasting music of water that tinkles into pools. Gems and crystals and veins of precious ore glint in the polished walls; and the light glows through folded marbles, shell-like, translucent as the living hand of Queen Galadriel. There are columns of white and saffron and dawn-rose, fluted and twisted into dreamlike form, they spring up from many-colored floors to meet the glistening pendants of the roof; wings, ropes, curtains fine as frozen clouds; spears, banners, pinnacles of suspended palaces! Still lakes mirror them; a glimmering world looks up from dark pools covered with clear glass.”
— The Lord of the Rings, Book III, Chapter 8

I worked on this picture off and on for several months, and I finally got it where I wanted it. This is my 3D digital artwork, not a photograph. Created in Vue Complete 2014.

March 15, 2016

“‘Down there,’ said Golg, ‘I could show you real gold, real silver, real diamonds.’

“‘Bosh!’ said Jill rudely. ‘As if we didn't know that we're below the deepest mines even here.’

“‘Yes,’ said Golg. ‘I have heard of those little scratches in the crust that you Topdwellers call mines. But that's where you get dead gold, dead silver, dead gems. Down in Bism we have them alive and growing. There I'll pick you bunches of rubies that you can eat and squeeze you a cup full of diamond-juice. You won't care much about fingering the cold, dead treasures of your shallow mines after you have tasted the live ones of Bism.’”
— C.S.Lewis, “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair”, Chapter 14, “The Bottom of the World”

December 3, 2015

Hiddenite , or Lithia Emerald, is a rare green gemstone. It was discovered in western North Carolina in 1879, and named after the geologist William Hidden.

This picture of course is not a photograph of actual hiddenite. It's a combination of my drawing with an Apophysis fractal for the background. I laid out the design to give the effect of heading into a dark cave where such gemstones might be mined. This piece was also an experiment in drawing faceted gems - they're harder than the round orbs.

August 4, 2015