Digital imaging has taken over the world of matte painting. Few can deny that the quality of matte paintings, and special-effects shots in general, improve each year. Matte shots today are much tighter than they were in the past, and they can bear the scrutiny of an informed audience that demands HD quality and who will rewatch a particularly juicy matte shot over and over again. When a contemporary viewer looks at the matte shots of the past, many of the shots look rather painterly and wouldn’t pass muster in a modern production. However, they were state of the art when Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, and Citizen Kane premiered, and they hold their own timeless charm.
In this book, you’ll learn an arsenal of digital tricks, and I’ll encourage you to use in your workflow photographic references that purists may consider cheating. This is a common practice: matte artists today don’t do “pure” painting as they did in the past. But there is no replacement for painting skills—so, these lessons aside, take time to do paintings yourself, whether physical or digital.
If you have an opportunity to see some of the original matte paintings created in the pre-digital era, I encourage you to seek them out. In addition to being skillful matte work, many of them are great paintings in their own right, with crispness and directness of paint application that is a wonder to behold.
It’s appropriate to end this chapter by featuring the lives and work of two matte artists: Peter Ellenshaw and Albert Whitlock. They’re considered among the most influential artists to work in this field.