I created this landscape matte painting as part of David Luong’s amazing Photoreal Matte Painting Part 1 Workshop. This matte painting is based on my visualization of a scene in the novel Elfstones of Shannara. Here is the story behind this scene: “The Matted Brakes end at the Pykon, a mountain split by the Mermidon river; an elven fortress lies in the crack of the closer peak.” The book was made into a TV series on MTV called the Shannara Chronicles. After seeing the show, I may evolve this down the road to include ruins from a city. I liked how they brought that aspect into the world for the show. In the show, they made this place cold, so I see it as a challenge to evolve this scene to match the book version which was more swamp/river focused.