Some from me

#1

done this month. the first one is my first ever try at a matte.




#2

Hi Mattyuk.
Welcome to the forum! Some good first efforts here. The main thing that strikes me in these images is the fuzzy matte lines between elements. It is always important that everything stays sharp and opaque, soft matte lines are a dead giveaway. Instead, work out the form of how these elements fit into each other. Also, you need to be careful of perspective, lighting, and colour matching.
It might be more beneficial for you at this stage to do some painting rather than photo manipulation. Painting forces you to think about form, colour and light in a lot more depth.

Cheers!
Nick

#3

Many thanks. Yeah I think I will definitely paint more in the mattes in the future. Or did you mean paint before do any mattes?

#4

Hey mattyuk. Welcome to the forum!
These are pretty good for first efforts, particularly the first two.

I think what spacesprayer is trying to say is it can be beneficial to your learning to begin without using photographs as content and simply create some simple sketches in PS using your tablet as a first step. They don’t have to be good (i know mine weren’t) but they force you to appreciate and develop the skill of imbuing your mattes with depth, lighting and good composition. Dusso has some good DVDs on this sort of sketching.

It’s also good practice as it prevents you developing a habit of relying too much on your source material. This way the painting comes first and the detail you get from photos follows after. Also this method means when developing a new work you can experiment with many different compositions/lighting setups etc quickly and easily.

It is a great idea to use photos as reference for your sketches. For example colour-picking hues from them if you like the lighting, or using the architecture in a holiday photo to give you ideas for a city based sketch.

good luck with it

#5

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