Hello!
I’d love any advice and crits towards finishing this matte painting which I produced during the recent (wonderful!) Matte Painting class with David Luong.
It’s not there yet, esp around the campfire area and I’d love to hear opinions please. Many thanks 
(I’ve also attached the photos I’ve included in this image - except for the top right, these are NOT my photographs, they were not taken by me.)
Heyo! Nice to see you again :wavey: Yep, couldn’t resist a second go with David - his guidance is awesome
Yeah, wish I could have done the same but RL is getting in the way.
Ok, well, I’m not sure but I think that light area to the left is too bright and competing with the campfire/sunset. I find my eye dancing between the two. Other then that I love it.
Hiya!
Nice to see a fellow Kiwi artist on here
I think its a beautiful picture, the only thing I can see is the campfire does need some work, its hard to tell what is around it at the moment, are they tents? maybe try defining the terrain around it a little more with some cool silhouette shadows cast from the objects around the campfire?
I also feel that the campfires light is fighting against the sunset at the moment, you could try to raise the height of the trees around the campfire’s enclosure to create a darker area untouched by the suns rays this would really separate out campfires light as an individual light source.
All in all I think it has a fantastic overall mood, very tranquil and LOTR like (thats a win in my books lol) keep up the good work!
Hello,
Gene, thanks for that. I’ll have a play around with that side and see what happens. Thanks for the input
Hey Pixelatedkiwi! Hello to Snell’s Beach! Thank you for taking the time to respond too, I agree with that about the campfire, it’s been the thing I’ve most struggled with - such a small detail and often the hardest to get across. I’m sure your suggestions will work - I’ll get to it!
Thank you both so much
Sorry about the delay getting back to this.
*Its lost some of the evening light value in this upload - mmmm will look at that…it’s more sunny on my monitor.
I’ve worked with the camp and fire - one of the issues I think is that I’m unsure how to emphasise the camp further while not making too much more of it - more detail seems to make it too clear in some ways, esp given the distance. I think some gentle movement on the smoke and possibly distant singing may help! but that would be cheating! 
It certainly looks a lot better, you could add things around it at the correct detail level for that distance detail like tents, equipment or horses/people silhouettes, this would identify it as a campfire without adding details that would loose your distance perspective.
Heyo Thank you! Yes - horses are a good idea I like that. I need to open out the camp area a bit more; I wish I’d set it up for a camera move! Even a subtle one using 2.5D would have been nice and helped reveal more too.
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