Matte painting is a painted representation to create the vision of a place that makes you believe that it really exists. Filmmakers prefer matte painting in their films rather than spending huge amount on film sets. This technique also helps them to create a seamless visual environment that is impossible to build or visit. It is a visual effects process where artists work on 3d programs, photo manipulation with different set of images and hand-painted elements to develop an outstanding environment. We’d like to present you with some master matte painters and their stunning art pieces for your admiration and inspiration.

New York Ruins by Jenovah-Art

Yes it happened, a ruins matte painting of NY. I chose not to put in any famous buildings since that’s been done many times. I took the plate of this pic on the roof of the POD hotel somewhere around 55th. ~ Jenovah-Art

London Rooftops by Raphael-Lacoste

I did this Matte Painting for the background of Annie Leibovitz Photo “Peter Pan”, that was part of a campain for Disney Parks. Enjoy! ~ Raphael-Lacoste

InfiniteOZ – Milltown Exterior by andreasrocha

The image was almost completely painted in Photoshop. Based on an initial sketch I used 3d Studio Max to make a quick mock-up model over which I would paint the final image. It was done over several weeks and the final image is about 10000 pixels wide (as are all the others) to allow for the big zoom. Each of the artists was given a short brief about the environment to create but the rest was up to us using our imagination and interpretation. I am quite proud to have been part of such an amazing group of artists. ~ andreasrocha

Babel Myth by fstarno

Futuristic City by JJasso

This is a visual development matte painting for film I created at Blur studios a while ago, 3ds max rendering and paint over on photoshop later, it was a fun paint with lots of detail , original size is 5K wide
original city concept is not mine , I just took the rough color skecth and did a high res image with lots of detail, took me about a month to complete ! ~ JJasso

Survivor by Jacklionheart

This is a personal fun project which I have done to get some practice in matte painting techniques. Most in the artwork is painted with standard Photoshop brushes. I really enjoyed painting the girl and the highlights in the cityscape. I noticed also that the background looks much more matte painting like without the cyborg, but I think I will leave her in the picture….there are enough devastated cityscape matte paintings out there. ~ Jacklionheart

City Angels by frankhong

This one is inspired by many awesome matte painters and environment artists, always wanted to try a fast city matte painting to test my abilities. I’ve looked at a number of Andree Wallin’s paintings and was a bit influenced in the methods of lightings. this matte is completed in two long sitdowns, head hurts from sleep deprivation. ~ frankhong

Waterfall city by superspacemonkey

Matte painting for a class assignment. While it’s not my favourite form of art matte painting is a very useful skill, however you need a very good sense of perspective and eye for detail. ~ superspacemonkey

The Cathedral by aksu

It is a matte painting, made out of about 20 stock photos. Tried to get a realistic image while still keeping a fantasy feeling. It was difficult to get the whole piece to go well together , because of the large number of photos that were used. I had to do a lot of painting to get the right lighting, beacause each image came with a different lighting system, so all the highlights and shadows had to be remade. The black and white levels were also a chalange , I worked a lot to get the dept I was looking for. ~ aksu

Post-Apocalyptic England town by indie-rec

This is an attempt to do a matte painting. Here’s a bit of an explanation on how I did it (sorry writing in english is not completely natural for me yet) : I only started with a photo of the corner of a street in a little town of England. I expanded the canvas and painted the whole composition, then I added the photos to give photorealistic textures. Then I painted over the light. It took me 160 hours to complete over 5 weeks. Best viewed with a high brightness(there’s plenty of details in the dark areas). I think I over did it but I really like it. Hope you enjoy. ~ indie-rec