Making Of "But Not Broken By Kirsi Salonen

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I started this piece in a very plain way. At the other screen got two photo references of the model Sam Worthington as in a normal camera shot and as the cyborg. By mixing these two together I made the layout to fit like it's from a film scene and yet keep it as a portrait. Never done this vertically narrow piece before so this was a fun idea to try ;)

So, let's start the sketching. I'll quickly colour the background by taking the awesome colours of the movie pic reference, as I want to have a nice colour base for the figure and starting mood.
Then I draw the facial main lines of the character by using vector pen by quickly following the model and then transform the design to fit the layout. The visible outlines come out nicely just by making the vectors as an Adjustment layer and raise Curve levels as I want it for now. So here's the backbone of the whole set.

The next phase is to make the rough look like the model of course. So by using the same Adjustment level what the vector pen was used, I'll rasterize the layer and make it editable. Just by simple gradient-tool I soften up the sharp edges and finish the "drawing" that way ith basic preset brushes (that have Other Dynamics on) At this stage is good to be quite careful and really don't loose focus on the model, since it's very important to make a good character from the start so he's believable.

Added also some simple Speckled Grain to the background as a nice effect so it shows underneath the character too. But he's not the terminator-guy quite yet, just getting there ;)

Highlighting the face is fun, as now the basic structure is figured out. Just lasso the areas I want to pop out and add new Adjustment layer to those selections and adjust the Curves again. After this I take the Gradient -tool to good use and with black&white -colours I either erase or add more brightness and softness to the areas. Most important is to keep the Gradient as faint as possible, no strong contrast differences at this point. As I want to add more details and areas I'm still unsure of if they're going to stay, I simply add more layers with the same principle if needed. I never do a piece on a single layer, even if it's a speed painting. You always have to have possibilities for changes and corrections.

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The cyborg is born! This happens simply by vector pen (simply draw what things you want going over the cheak and then do the same Adjustment layer Curves modification of the vector mask) and after that rasterize it for regular painting ways. Well, don't know calling my style so "regular" but it's that for me at least, haha!

After I drew some of the metallic structures visible, I adjusted the colour values in Hue/Saturation to bring out the blood marks. Then modified the overall Curves with overlaying Adjustment layer.

Lots of things happening during this phase and it would take forever explaining all of them, so I'll try to keep it brief. Now after the basic main character is figured out, I need to proceed to the background for a while. Before anything bigger, I place a photograph of mine that I took from a trip at Pompej, Italy. Thought the old ruins would fit perfectly to the atmosphere of this piece. So I placed that pic to the back, transformed it a bit and then with a mask adjusted it to the fading perspective.

Then added another photo I took from Andalucia, Spain and made it to match with the front pic. Then on top of these, added a lot of different Adjustment layers to make the landscape fit with the rest of the layout by using transparent gradients. There's also many types of colour adjustments made within the process which resulted the current colour scheme of the piece.