Another one I'm quite happy with...maybe I'm actually making progress? *grin*

It's Stump

Recommend looking at it full size.

Night City

Quite pleased with how this one turned out.

Time: approx. 90 mins

Yosemite

Just a quick sketch, haven't really felt the creature urge to paint for a while, but today I wanted to do something, so I re-created a photo I found on google images. (This means I didn't paint over the photo, I just used it as a reference)

Yorkshire Moor

I wasn't happy with the payoff from the picture...your eye kinda went straight to the center of the frame, and then there wasn't anything there to hold your attention....so I fixed it, and in the process, updated the textures and such a bit more.

Farmhouse V2

I think this is an improvement, lemme know if you agree.

Obviously, you may not agree, but in terms of successful application of perspective, painting, textures and lighting, I feel like this is my best so far. Not that it's perfect, but there's no way in HELL I could have done this two months ago :)

Farmhouse

Spent about 6 hours working on this today...and the coolest thing was that the reason I spent so much more time on it was that I saw and understood what else needed to be done, so I could do it :)

Started with a speed painting, moved on to a concept sketch and then took it to matte painting.

I'd actually qualify this one as a full-on matte painting, the background is comprised of 4 photos and some minor 3D work.

Dystopian Tower

Source plate

As always, lemme know what you think :)

This is Matsuyama-jo, in Ehime Prefecture. Check out the source as well as the matte, I did quite a bit of cleaning up. I really kinda like de-teching these castles and returning them to how they were in the 1700s.

Matsuyama-jo

Source plate

Did a little more surgery to this one:

Sea Towers

Sea Towers Source

The first one is a "day to night" conversion of the last one.

Japanese Cliffs at Night

The second one transports some Cambodian ruins to Nevada.
If you want to see the source plate, lemme know and I'll post it.

Cambodian Ruins

Ok, since it worked well, and gave me an ego boost, and 'cause it's dead slow here at work today, here's a second invisible matte painting based off my pictures from Okinawa.

Cliffside Temple

Here's the source:

Source picture

These are really too easy to do. It is kinda like applying the photoshop skills I learned with fashion models to terrain instead of faces. Still, the end result looks about 1000% better than my paintings ;)

An invisible matte painting is one where it looks just like reality - no Hudson River school stuff, nothing overly dramatic, just an attempt to recreate reality.

Takachiho-jo (Takachiho Castle)

Note: There is no Takachiho-jo in real life. Takachiho is the name of the town about 45km from Nobeoka where the background for this painting was shot. The castle is Shuri-jo in Okinawa.

If you're curious about the source plate, here it is:
Source plate

So, it's been a while, as I've been trying to work on my painting skills via concept sketching and such...but in Okinawa last weekend I picked up some reference photos that I figured would do the trick, so i went back and converted by Jungle Valley sketching into an actual matte painting. I would appreciate any and all comments :)

Jungle Valley Matte

Here's another matte painting concept sketch. I'm quite pleased with this one - which I suppose is a good thing :)

Mountain City

I realized that I've been afraid of saturation...every DVD I've watched hammers home, "Don't oversaturate!"...but I've been undersaturating, leaving pictures flat and boring looking. I redid my Jungle Valley concept to change the lighting and make things more dynamic. I think this one is WAY better, but let me know if you agree :)

Brighter Jungle Valley

So I decided to follow the "rules" and create a concept sketch of what I wanted to make a matte painting out of. Truthfully, I may never actually create the painting, but I wanted to do the sketch to a level that I felt like I understood what the painting was supposed to do. I integrated a little bit of CG for the temple, but otherwise, it's all painted, no reference photos were used.

Jungle Valley Concept

So this coming Saturday is Graduation for my school....which, by the twisted logic of Japanese education, meant that I had today off. I went out Rt. 218 towards Takachiho, taking pictures of rivers and mountains for use in matte paintings.

This one kinda assembled itself. The foreground and background are different photos, and I painted the trees.

Mountain Trail

I'm going to finish the waterfalls tomorrow.

Here's another update. Blurred out the back mountains, textured the rock face with reference photos, increased the size of the rock in the front and decreased the blue in the waterfall.

Mountain Waterfall v3

Ok, based on comments from a variety of sources, I decided that the city wasn't going to do it, and that the upper waterfall was more trouble than it was worth...so, here's the VERY simplified version. I decided it was better to accomplish something simple than to fail at something complex ;) This feels much better to me, although I am still open to criticism, I'd like to get it looking as good as I can!

Mountain Waterfalls