When you start a digital portrait choose something that you are very interested in. I know this may sound obvious but if you're going to spend 10+ hours on a project the process is much easier if it's a pleasure and not a chore.

Ok with that said, I wanted to do a portrait of a memorable movie character. I then remembered those immortal characters from the film 300. (A great movie by the way). I thought to myself "this is perfect" so I got started.

After searching for about an hour I found this image.

I like to put a grid over the reference photograph when I do a digital painting.

Click here for a good tutorial on how to make a grid with Photoshop.

Then I created a new canvas with a width of 3000px and height of 1577px (retaining the same aspect ratio as the reference photograph.

Because the image was so dark I decided to set the canvas color to black and build it up by making light marks. (As opposed to building it up with light marks.)

I broke up the canvas into four layers. A Grid, Figure, Background and Base layer.

Ok with the reference and canvas ready to go I began to block out the figure, so let's get to it!

This step is crucial! Remember to stay light and relaxed as you do this step. Don't worry about your marks at this point just get the general shape and composition down.

As you can see below, I made large broad marks that generally stayed in proportion (using the grids as a guide).

I know it doesn't look like much yet but I can't stress enough how important this step is. It provides the foundation for the rest of the piece. You wouldn't build a house on a weak foundation would you? The same applies here.

For the majority of the project I used basic brushes in photoshop. I would set the opacity to 100% when I was building up forms and anywhere between 30 and 50% when I was adding lights and shadows.

In my college drawing classes we spent an entire semester just "defining our focal point." What that means is finding the centerpiece of you work and building up detail. This is the most important part of your work therefore you must pay special attention to that area. In a portrait, the focal point is usually the face (such as it is here).

Below I started to build up the face, zooming in between 66.7% and 100%.

I'd like to make a point about the zoom tool and photoshop. When you're zooming in and out, hold down Alt - Shift and then use the scroll wheel. Notice how the zoom kind of snaps? This is because you are doing a "proportional zoom." What happens is photoshop must continuously render the image on the screen and if the image zoom isn't proportional to the actual image size, jagged edges will appear. However, if you use a proportional zoom the edges remain crisp and clear.

Take a look at the image below to see what I mean.

The full size version. Look at the nice smooth edges. mmmmmm pretty :)

This is a “disproportional” zoom. I just used the zoom tool with the scroll wheel. Do you notice the jagged edges?

Here is the “proprotional” zoom. (By holding down Alt - Shift and using the mouse wheel.) Notice that the edges are smoother? Remember this tip if you want to get the best quality paintings!

This is probably the most rewarding step (and also the easiest. Now that I had a solid foundation and focal point I started to add more details.

As I continued to work with the face I noticed that his mask was a bit too dark. So I lightened it up a bit and added more details.

With the face pretty solid I started to work on other parts. Specifically his shoulders. I started with a large brush and then got smaller and smaller as I added more details.

Details is what separates a sketch from a masterpiece. I can literally keep adding details forever in photoshop. You have to decide how much is enough. Because this painting was going to be seen no greater than 500 pixels wide I didn't feel it necessary to get into super details.

On 100% it still looks rather blurry, in this case that's ok.

In the next step I started adding details to the background.

The more and more I worked with it however, the less I liked it. It was a question of my technical ability it was a question of compositional balance. I felt like the background took away from the portrait.

Therefore I hid the background layer and added the weapons.

I liked this more. Keep in mind that if you're using a reference you don't have to follow it completely. This is your creation, you have license to do whatever you want with it.

Overall I was pretty happy with the piece, however there were still a few more things that needed improvement. particularly his right shoulder and the weapons.

As you can see, the process isn't all that complicated. However, it is time consuming. This piece took me around 7 hours from start to finish and there is still more work I can do on it. (Such as the weapons and his hat.)

If you are interested in more tutorials likes these why not check out our excellent digital painting section?

Tutorial Author: Joshua Bolduc
Co-founder: TutorialQuest.com
Owner: PartDigital.com