'Photoshop'

Software Used :

This image is a matte painting I created for pleasure. The original idea was just to make a landscape with an interesting atmosphere; the idea of the mountaintop mining developed after I’d searched for some photos and references for this matte painting.

I decided I wanted to depict a representation of human madness: digging a huge hole in a mountain, damage the landscape and nature.

I started with an aerial photo, which gave me a really good sense of depth. The landscape in the photo was virginal and not dominated by the big mountain. It’s a landscape that can be improved. I then began to search for other references and aerial photos… (Fig.01).

Here are some of the references I gathered that had particularly interesting elements that would make for an easier and faster matte painting (Fig.02).

Next I made a couple of layers where I could quickly sketch out some lines. The first was just to put my ideas on – the hole, the mountain chain etc – and then on the second layer I was more definite, and sketched in the mountain chain (Fig.03).

Then I started making my mountain chain with elements cut from the reference images I’d gathered, and painted in a shadow for the hole. At this stage the elements were just posed on the image; they weren’t completely blended in with the landscape yet (Fig.04)