Speak Friend and Enter

A few months ago when I was away, my mom painted one of the walls in my bedroom to be a chalkboard. Since then I have doodled on it but never really done any art on it. Then it hit me, the perfect illustration for chalk. A to scale rendition of the Door into Moria.

Each WIP picture is the result of about an hour or two's work.

 First I set up a grid so as to get the proportions right. each square is 1' squared the ending drawing was 6'x8' I did want to actually sketch part of the picture so I put in the rune at the bottom.

I put in the middle hammer and star first because they had very distinct places on the grid
The arch was pretty easy I knew bassed off of the refrence photo that the arch had a radius of 2' so I attached the chalk to a 2' piece of string to make the perfect arch. same with the outer arch just 8 inches added to the length of the string. Finally I put in the runes in the upper corners.

This was a pretty easy hour, I just put in the crown, stars and circle at the top of the arch.

I put in the columns and started the trees. This part was kinda hard because there was a lot of gestimation on where the branches were. some where close enough to spots on the grid that I fudged them a little. I also discovered that the rune I put in with the grid at the bottom was to small so I erased it but didn't get around to fixing it this pass.

 I finished the trees and apparently forgot about the Rune at the bottom again.

The final pass was by far the hardest, but also funnest. I had to insert the runes in the arch. I started at either end and worked to the middle to make sure that it would fit. And I finally put in that bottom rune, odd that what I ment to do first ended up being last.

The Final with the handsome artist for scale. Photo credit younger brother Joseph

The door is very fitting on this wall since the laundry room is on the other side, and we often refer to that as the Black Chasm! If I could change one thing I would paint the outlet black. 

Melon!
mr_anderson