Matte Painting
Blood Moon Over Malibu
Taking it from photograph to painting -
A Blood Moon or Red Moon is rare. Capturing the perfect photograph with the magical reflection off the Pacific Ocean made this the perfect event.
Matte paintings are created by taking small portions of the piece and painting with a brush. This process takes approximately 18 to 40 hours in order to bring about the desired visual effect. When I work on a matte painting, I break it down to pixel level for meticulous work.
The Process of Matte Painting
Lava Castle
I started with a simple sand and sea photo for this matte painting. Little by little I developed a computerized lava castle in order to create an artistic work. Years ago, this matte would have been painted by hand. A technique which had been used for years in the movie industry for special effects.
Great care was taken with the seagull painting. White was used for the main paint and primer coat, with layers of grayed beige tones and some direct light grays being added for the cracks and crevices of the wood grain.
The water was fun to work with as it had deep shades of dark greens and dark blues. The watery foreground seen through the wooden gun whale was very reflective and mirror like. This continued up through the mid-ground. Starting at the upper central mid-ground, the watery reflection filtered away into soft grayed tones.
There was mist on the landward side of the photograph. I decided to play with this in addition to removing several buildings along the coastline. After the buildings and parking lots were removed, transparent layers of mist were feathered into the coast including the bluffs overlooking what had been Pacific Coast Highway. The bright blue sky came out naturally and did not require as much detailed work as did other portions of this photograph.
