Making of “Distant Shores” by Andreas Rocha
After that I start searching for photos, taken by me, from image collections of from the Internet, and I quickly copy/paste selections with the lasso tool into my painting. I make these selections very rough for two reasons: 1.If I would have made too careful selections I would have interrupted the initial matte painting process where I still don’t really know which direction I will be taking. Also, these selections would probably get over painted anyway later on. 2. By making the edge quite apparent I’m forced to paint in the surrounding details in order to blend the collaged element with the background to make everything look coherent. However, this blending stage is always preceded with image adjustments, in order to match the brightness, contrast and color with the existing painting underneath. For this I make heavy use of the following filters: Brightness/Contrast, Hue/Saturation, Color Balance and Photo Filter. Sometimes I use these filters in their adjustment layer variant so I can “paint” where I want these filters to act. This stage, although shortly explained, is the most important and time consuming of the whole process. As the painting nears realism, you can better detect things that are wrong and out of place, which forces you to make a lot of refining to bring everything together.
In the end I added some detail objects to give the painting some life, like the ship, the towers and flag. The fortress was built with a lot of reference from Spanish military architecture. I also made some overall adjustments, after flattening the image, like blurriness and noise.
(c) Andreas Rocha, www.andreasrocha.com
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