Step by Step

I'll take the time to explain my process in some detail here for anyone who's interested.

From top left.

1: Stage one is my early value experiment, going with a lighter background into a darker foreground, it allows for strong atmospheric perspective of the background and some darker values up front without disrupting much.

In this stage I work with a large chalk brush to fill in much of the silhouette and try to figure out where the forms are.

Always work from bigger to smaller brushes.

After I feel like I have a good idea of the layout, I start to build up forms slightly by adding in some more values, either lighter or darker to achieve what I need, paying specific attention to my main point of interest; in this case it was his face as per usual.

Sometimes in this stage I will lighten the figure and sketch in with a darker value where things need to go more precisely, such as the eyes or hands.


2: In stage two it's all about color.
If the values are good enough in stage one I can work into color using low opacity layers. I almost always start with a color layer and fill it with something like a sienna tone or a blue as a sort of under painting. 

From there I will throw a few more color layers on top at about 20-40 percent opacity, with other colors like the red of the hat or the skin in his face.

There's no trick to getting your colors right, working from greyscale, you will always need to paint on top, but you can try to work in as many tones as you can in this stage with color layers.
Soft light layers for light values and so on.

I think I had around 10 different layers of color before I started the next step.


3: In Stage 3 I try to flesh it out a little more moving tones around and adding some lighter values of local color in, trying to get the shape of the character correct, facial features in place, etc. 

I experiment with some foreground elements as well as some different colors and values in the background.

I add some darker values and lighting in to the piece because it's looking very washed out and sort of similar across the values.

This stage is like pre-rendering, it is pretty quick but it's important not to get caught up trying to render everything before I finish this stage.


4: In Stage 4, this is where I try to precisely render the figure out, I avoid staying in one spot for too long, but I always have a habit of saving the focal point for last which isn't a particularly good idea as it can lead to over rendering areas that you could leave pretty unfinished.

In this stage it is important to be mindful of edge control, though it's a good idea to work from hard to soft, some people prefer to work soft to hard but never looks right for me and I find it hard to render. In general; Soft as in the further away/ in shadow the more you lose the edge where as hard edges are vice versa.

I find the image is extremely washed out in this stage and attempt to alleviate it with a Levels Adjustment Layer, sometimes you have to do these things to save time instead of re-painting areas.

You could write a whole book on rendering an image, but just keep in mind that the more you practice and study the better you will get at it, there is no trick.



5: Stage 5 is a repetition of 4th, with some more fine tuned rendering.
I render out the background and any missing elements.

I was feeling that the composition was a little lopsided so I added the puzzle piece for balance hoping for the best.

I some times use fancy brushes in this stage to add some neat stuff like the snow/stars in the background, some cracks and some textures here and there just to add some finish to it. 

I spend some time adding small details to the focal point to try to draw more attention to it, like the highlights on the nose etc.

I lighten it up quite considerably with Levels and on to stage 6.


6: In this final stage I spend some time polishing the image.
I used another Levels Adjustment, Color Balance and Brightness and Contrast Adjustments, to bring it out of the dark as it were.

I found a neat paper texture on a resource site that I use a lot now and add it to a soft light layer at about 20 percent opacity, it looks cool!.

There are probably a few things I forgot to mention, but that is mostly the process for this image.




I hope you learned something if you are new, I appreciate all the comments you guys give me. Hopefully I can give the love back a little with this.


Please forgive my terrible writing skills.
_
Dustin