Artist Copy

This is the artists copy that I have produced of WojtekFus' digital portrait.  What I really love about this is the contrast between the crisp details off the face, and the out of focus expressionist background details. The bold brush strokes and vivid colours really add a feeling of movement and give motion to the piece. Here is the process I went through in order to create this artist copy.

I started off by drawing a rough sketch of the piece from observation. This was pretty simple as I used a large canvas, and was able to place both images side by side, comparing proportions and shape.

I lowed the luminosity of the background, as this allows me to have better judgement of tone withing the skin colour, as when it is too light it's difficult to form a realistic judgement of highlights and shadows.

Here is what it looked like after I had finished placing the rough colours. To do this I used the oil brush on a high opacity, with strong colour settings. This meant that any colour I applied would be more opaque and wouldn't immediately blend with the colours around it.

This is how it looked after I had blended the colours using a mixture of a water smudge tool, and the oil brush set to a lower paint density. To further progress the piece, I added a basic layout of colours and lines to get an idea of where what details would fall.

I further developed the background and hair by adding shape and more brush strokes into it. I also added more details into the face and added the 'warpaint'. It was here that I noticed that the tone of the skin was slightly off and would benefit from some colour adjustment. 

This is how the piece looked after altering the final colours. I did this on an overlay layer set to a low opacity. This allowed me to alter the warmth of the skin tones, but also keep the intensity minimal.
I also increased the glow of the back-light, and brought it further onto the model's cheek.
I think that the final stage really  brought the piece to the next level as it made it just that extra bit more accurate.

If I were to redo this artist copy, I think I would create more texture brushes, as I felt limited in terms of texture and brush strokes. Over all, I am pretty happy with the out come of my copy.