How to Paint a Freedom Fighter in Photoshop

I did this Illustration for the Homefront Contest on Deviant Art. I have not done a full illustration like this in a while so I gave it a go to apply some of the knowledge I've gathered and maybe learn something new in the process.

I started by doing a rough sketch. Working out the perspective and overall composition.

Blocking in some color to find something I like. I went with an overall blue color scheme and added some warm reds and oranges to the character to make him stand out form the cool background

Started to render here, adding in some detail and texture.

Bumped up the blue in the background to create more contrast with the character.

More rendering in the foreground.

I felt like there was something missing and I wanted to add more movement so I decided on adding a tattered flag.

Added some glow effects to the light sources with a color dodge layer.

Added some debris flying around, some explosions in the background and enlarged the spaceship on the left to make it look more threatening. I also added more damage and cracks to the top of the building to avoid the tangent with the top of the page.

And here is the finished illustration. I did some color adjustments and slapped on the logo and then submitted my artwork to the contest and hoped for the best :)

You can check out the contest here: http://nightshadeberry.deviantart.com/art/Homefront-597744746

You can watch the video here:

Video Tutorial: How to draw realistic eyes

Tonal Studies

Influences and inspirations

Stanley Lau aka Artgerm

Serge Birault aka PapaNinja

Mucha

1950's Pin Ups

Erik Jones aka Theirison

Leonardo Da Vinci

Dimebag Steps

Below follows the Wips of my Dimebag painting

The whole process was done in Photoshop CS5.

I used 2 brushes for the whole painting: 1: Soft edged airbrush for shading and creating form and 2: round hard edged brush for detail and creating texture.

Refrence image



Step 1: Basic Quick Sketch





Step 2: Fill background colour and started blocking in base colours underneath line art layer
(Using soft airbrush, flow set to 100%)





Step 3: Started adding shadow and light to the face. I Lightened the line art
 layer at this stage.
(Still using soft airbrush but flow is set to under 25%) 






Step 4: Block in hair on a new layer
Here I start painting above the line art layer




Step 5: Render hair and start working on hands and clothing
The hair is first blocked in with a large airbrush and then detail
is added with smaller hard edged brushes with shape dynamics selected





Step 6: I did the guitar on a seperate layer and used the pen tool for the strings.




Step 7: Added some text and painted his tattoo as well as a few final touches with
a hard edged brush.



Final Image :http://nightshadeberry.deviantart.com/art/DimebagDarrell-Tribute-257662398