New Digital Work in Progress: Entrance to Khazad-dûm

I started a new Digital Art piece today. I was inspired by a rock outcropping I came across while walking my dog. It looked like a doorway into the rocks so I decided to make it become one.  Khazad-dûm was a Dwarf kingdom in Middle earth so I decided this was an entrance.

 

 Here is the image as it sits on my computer right now. 

To follow along the step by step process for creating this image read on after the break. 

I'm trying to decide what to do next, I like it as it is and think it would also look cool later in the evening or at night. We'll see how that plays out.

 

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This is the original image I started with but while I was there I shot a close up version of the "door" so I would have more detail.

Here I used the content aware scale tool in Photoshop to increase my image size and expand the foreground.

Same thing here for the sky

I brought in another rock formation from another image captured in the same area to add a little interest on the left side.

I used content aware scale again to fill the full frame. 

This will allow a very large print of the final image.

This is where I brought in the more detailed closeup image of the doorway.

I decided I need some clouds so I went to my cloud library and added these.

To tie everything together better I added a Blue Photo Filter to the entire image in Photoshop.

Here I used Viveza2 to kick up the detail in the foreground only

I made a selection around the door and then used the transform, warp tool 

to shape it to the size I wanted.

I found an Elven looking door and overlayed the rock door using a linear light blending mode.

Then a Hue/Saturation layer to kick back the saturation and darken it a little.

I used a new blank layer with the blending mode set to multiply and painted in shadows around the doorway using a soft brush with 5% fill to set it back into the rock more.

Here I used NIK Color Efex4 Detail Extractor on the foreground to kick up the detail even more.

To get where I am now I added another Hue/Saturation layer and desaturated and darkened the blues in the sky and background.

From here I will I can go several ways including using this as a plate to add characters in costume. It will probably turn into 3 or 4 different images now.