Inspired by The Return of the King
LOTR by Bruegel: Minas Tirith as the Tower of Babel
From £19.99
The Scene
From The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien (1955), Book V, Chapter 1. Pippin rides in with Gandalf at dawn and sees the city for the first time: seven circles cut into the mountain, each wall higher than the last, each gate facing a different way, and the great keel of rock splitting every circle but the first, up to the Citadel and the White Tower. I wanted to see it the way an engineer would, every level placed where the book puts it. The labels mark the Great Gate, the Houses of Healing, Fen Hollen and the seven circles. An inspired-by print: nothing in it is taken from any film or game, and it isn't an official map.
The Style
An engineer's blueprint from about 1900: ruled lines, compass arcs, fine hatching for cut stone, white on an uneven Prussian blue with faint fold creases. Every word on the sheet, the tags, notes, scale and title block, is typeset by me, never drawn by the image tool.
The Inspiration
The look comes from a real cyanotype blueprint of a railway coaling dock, Scranton, Pennsylvania, about 1900. I borrowed its white line on blue and the calm precision of an engineer's sheet. The trestle isn't here; the city is.
How It's Made
I create each scene with AI image tools, then art-direct and refine it until it feels right. It's a print of a digital artwork made in the style of a cyanotype blueprint, not a hand-made cyanotype or an original print. A typeset caption under the picture names the book and the work it follows. Each one carries my printed "Chapter & Scene" signature in the margin.
Sizes and Frames
A4 or A3, unframed or framed. Every print is made to order on heavyweight 200gsm+ archival matte paper at full print quality (300 DPI). Frames are slim pine, in black, white or natural oak, with shatter-resistant plexiglass and no mount, so the print's own cream margin is the border. Framed prints arrive ready to hang. Free delivery to the UK and US, tracked on most orders. Small unframed prints going to the US are sent untracked.
The first of my Literary Plans: Rivendell and Bag End are coming next.
