Happy New Year!

If you follow the path in Welcome to the Cwm down to the bonfire and look to the right, you might see the Northern Lights.

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.”

You are expected, just follow the lights.

Here's a winter/fantasy scene in the “cwm” in the mountains that I've used for several other pictures. This time it's winter, and the solitary cottage dweller is expecting company.

Cwm Solitude
Cwm Waterfall
Cwm Autumn Frost

This morning was the first frost of autumn, and I finished this picture just in time. I love chilly mornings with frost, especially when the sun is just rising and everything glitters. I also love fall with all its colors.

This is actually looking out the window of the cottage in Cwm Solitude. You can just make out the path heading out of the cwm, and the steam fog coming from the river in the foreground.

I like to get plenty of use out of settings once I build them, so this render is around the corner to the left of my Cwm Solitude scene. I wanted to create a waterfall in the scene itself - often they're just a flat plane with a waterfall image that placed in the scene, or the waterfall is added later in PhotoShop. But this is an actual 3D waterfall that works from different angles. Eventually I hope to do another picture looking the opposite direction down the stream into the valley.

Sunrise over the Nottely River in western North Carolina.

It's rhododendron season in the Blue Ridge Mountains! This photo was taken at Craggy Gardens along the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina.

I like the word “cwm”, the way it's spelled and the way it sounds as well as the meaning. I would love to have a solitary retreat in a cwm like this. But this is my digital artwork, not a real place.

This is a reverse of Pass of Light; I basically just turned the (virtual) camera around. It didn't take nearly as long to render without the glowing translucent castle in the background.

A fantasy winter landscape created in Vue. I wanted a winter scene that focused mainly on the landscape but was obviously fantasy. This was also an experiment in working with snow, getting it to sparkle and reflect the light for an “other-worldly” effect. It was an extremely long render on account of all the lights and reflective and translucent surfaces, but I was able to just run it in stops and starts over about a month.