New Year, Old Habits

I haven't done any large scale environment matte paintings in a long while, so I took yesterday to start a new one from scratch. I've been following along with Maxx Burman's Intro To Matte Painting course of Learn Squared to get my juices flowing again and picked up some great new tips. I'm hoping to expand the skillset more and have this be a potential offering for clients this year, rather than solely focus on websites & apps.

Inspired by the outstanding work of Steve Cormann, I started with a blank 2000x1000 canvas, blocked out various landscape concepts and layouts, found one I liked, then started dropping in landscape stock, "bashing it" (warping and conforming it to a view I liked), then starting painting and applying heavier effects.

I used this mostly as an exercise to test what I'd learned in the course and push my skills more.

Full view attached.