Sometimes it is good to step away from commercial work for a little while and practice styles or techniques you would not normally use or would like to get better at. The internet is full of sites with free stock for you to dust off your Wacom and get busy. This cyberpunk portrait was the finished product of one of these sessions and in this walkthrough video, you will get to see how it all came together.
In the video, you will see some of my stock finding processes. My main go-to sites are Pixabay, Unsplash, and Deviantart. I start with a very plain portrait of a guy with some retouching and then begin to source and add various elements to his face to turn him into a cyberpunk. For these elements, I use old engine parts, wires and even part of a transformer.
Eventually to add more character to our cyberpunk character I will talk you through how I add a scar to his face using an image of decayed texture and then enhance it with dodge and burn. From then on we begin to match all the elements together and slowly with some color matching and overall dodge and burn we begin to pull all the face details together. Once the face is looking good we add color that enhances the cyberpunk theme and some light overlays to add the mood and style.
As I mentioned before there was no specific reason for this image other than try out some new techniques and get some practice in. But as creatives, we need these practice images to stay fresh and grow as artists.
