Digital Matte Composition

This digital matte composition is another attempt to create a far and distant land. I'm generally obsessed with fantasy artwork like this and those used as backgrounds in those same genre films or TV shows. I create scenarios to help with the overall piece and how it will look in the end. So I imagined that this bridge separated an entire aspect of land and that it could seemingly go on forever, or just used as country border of some kind. I wanted to just use only one base image and add smaller pieces to it, since the bridge was the focal point of it. I cleaned up the image some and added monuments and other pieces of landscape in the back like castles, ruins and some waterfalls. Added distress on the bridge to give it some age, also some dead trees and birds in the distance. To finish it, some Photoshop coloring gave it the stormy atmosphere, with some enhancements to shadows and midtones to give it some depth.