Brilthor Keep – An elven stronghold in the Blue mountains

Brilthor Keep – An elven stronghold in the Blue mountains – Part 5Creatief, Gastblog, Nieuws

Gastblog door Jeroen Mies / Guest blog by Jeroen Mies

Brilthor 5

So it was one year ago when I last wrote episode 4 of the build and a whole lot has happened since.

I definitely have been working on the project on and off and it is nearing completion when I publish this post.

Secondly, on Netflix, the first season of the Witcher aired and it was awesome. What many of you might not know is that the location for Brilthor Keep is in the Witcher lands to the far east. When I was looking for a setting and world to envision Brilthor Keep I went into the history and lore of The Witcher and came up with the Blue Mountains. As you may have seen in the series (minor spoiler alert), there are not that many elves left and this stronghold would be a perfect place for them to hide.

So let’s continue the description of the build.

The phase I arrived at now was to start building up the scenery of the bottom part of the project, which involved adding rocky details and greenery.

To start off I went shopping at a local gardening store and bought a few bags with a number of different size rocks. In the house there was already blue coloured small gravel that was also very suitable.

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After adding the rocks to various locations I started working on the colour for the pebbles and the rocks themselves.

The Blue mountains are named for their unique colour and magical blue ore that can be found all over the terrain. The rocks themselves are very porous and extremely light, which causes the very rich rocks to float. Add some magic in the mix and the foundation of the keep became into existence centuries ago…

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Creating the correct mix of distinct colours but also making it look ‘real’, is always challenging. So I started adding washes to the scenery to blend colours and tone down the extremes here and there.

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To create a more fantasy look and feel I experimented with new greens and create my own plants that would grow in this area. These (originally purple) flowers were transformed into something that would fit the scene, as well as some plastic plants that I turned into realistically looking vegetation that would grow in the waters.

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