My First Matte Painting

I’ve become really fascinated with matte painting recently and wanted to give it a shot. I found this tutorial online and decided I needed to do it. You should click to see this much larger.

This is what I’ve been up to lately. Not shooting, but pushing my photoshop skills. I’m mostly self taught. As someone who spent way too long in school and then spent time teaching, I believe you can teach yourself just about anything if you have the desire.

It seemed like a lot of my teachers could have been replaced by a book. All they did was lecture straight from the book and hardly ever added anything unique to justify their salary. So, why the hell do I need to pay someone to read a book to me? I don’t. I’ll get the book and teach myself in the comfort of my home while listening to music.

Believe it or not, this started out as 2 daytime images of Florence and Cairo.

After turning it to a night scene, I painted in the fires, smoke, and lighting. It was really fun bringing the city to life and controlling the light. I’ve had this idea of painting with light for quite some time, and this is probably the first time I’ve actually done what I had envisioned a long time ago.

My finished version isn’t quite finished, but it was close enough for me to share. I think I want to crop some off the sides and add more smoke and fire. I’ll probably light up more windows too.

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