First of all, some props: this style is heavily inspired by Alex Cherry's work. Alex's portfolio is really insane, and you should definitely check it out. One thing worth remembering is that if you have a good grasp of the software needed, it's easy to copy a style. The hard thing is to come up with the idea. With that said, the finished piece is on the left (click on it to see it fullscreen.)

First Things First

Before everything, this tutorial requires some knowledge of Photoshop, although every step is explained and the Photoshop menu system is easy to navigate. To start with, you need a photo of your subject. You could find one on the net, but I always prefer to gather my own source material; it's more authentic, and a piece means much more if you have a connection to the subject. The way we will composite our final image is very reliant on shadows, so you want to compose your subject so that you are happy with the shadows that fall on the face. To achieve this, you need to use a strong light source, like a spotlight or torch. Once you take the photo, you need to open it in Photoshop. We will use the dimensions of the photo for now. On the left is the photo I started with.

As you can see, the photo doesn't need to be high quality, in focus or well composed. All we care about is the face and hair. You can also see that the shadows that come up later as our masks are clearly defined in this picture. If you have poor source material, you will regret it when you finish your project.

Secondly, you need a texture to add the colour and interest to the final piece. This is one of the fun parts! Take a photo of the outside of your house wall, your carpet, your dog / goldfish, whatever! The point of the texture is to really add something individual to your piece. I started with what you see on your left (a photo of the inside of my chimney!)

Photoshopping

So lets open up Photoshop and start work. First of all, open your photograph within Photoshop. We need to extract the head and hair from the rest of the picture. To do this, select your only layer, duplicate it (right click > duplicate layer), and then goto Filters > Extract. Now you need to use the 'edge highlighter tool' to draw around the perimeter of the area you want to use (ie. the head and hair). Once you have closed the perimeter, use the 'fill tool' to fill the area you want to extract. You should see something like the psychedelic image on the left.

You should then click 'OK' to extract the head and hair from the rest of the picture. Ensuring that all other layer visibility is turned off, you will now see something similar to this.

Now don't worry that the edges are really irregular and pointy. A certain level of irregularity will help our final effect, and also it can be easily corrected. The next step is to select (ie. focus with the moving dashed line) the area of the head. On a Mac, you do this by holding down the Apple/Command key, and clicking on the thumbnail of the layer in the layers palate. I'm afraid that I have no idea how to do it on Windows, and I have no desire to know as I am not what you would consider a Windows fan. Nevertheless I presume it's fairly similar. Now, with the head selected, you need to make it into a 'layer mask', which can be done by clicking the 'Add Layer Mask' button at the bottom of the Layers palette (the rectangle icon with the circle in it!). Your layer should now look something like this.

Fun Time!

Ok, now comes the fun part. This is where you define what your piece will really look like in the end. Making sure you have the thumbnail selected in the layers palette, goto Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation, and change the Saturation to -100, as shown.

This will make your image black and white. Now goto Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast and boost that Contrast slider! For my example piece, I put the contrast to 100. This is something you should experiment with. The lower the contrast is, the more detail you retain. However, you should keep in mind that we will be removing the white areas later, in order to use the rest as our mask. In other words, the dark areas are what you should focus on. The more clearly defined the border between black and white in the image, the easier it will be later. This is how mine looked with a contrast of +74.

You can see that the image is starting to look like the finished piece. The next step is to remove any dark artifacts which you don't want. You can do this very easily by selecting the mask thumbnail on the layer and then the Brush from the tools palette. I won't explain how masks work in detail, but basically black is what Photoshop interprets as opaque, and white is what is interpreted as transparent. But really, you want to keep your picture rough around the edges.

Next, get the Magic Wand Tool and start selecting and erasing (with the backspace key)the selected white areas. The grey and white matrix denotes the transparent areas of the image. Eventually you should end up with something looking this.

Now you may need to do some fine-tuning. Ensure that the black areas denoting the nose and lips do not bleed onto the other shadows on the face. If they do, like in the example, take this time to use the eraser tool and carefully remove the unwanted dark areas. You can also turn the photo layer on and redraw the lips, as I have done. To do this, just erase the old lips and use the brush to trace over the areas of shadow around the lips like I have here.

The Home Straight

First, right click on the mask thumbnail and select 'Apply Layer Mask'. Next, make the area of the head a selection. You can do this on a Mac by holding the Apple/Command key and clicking on the thumbnail on the layer palette. Then follow the same route as before, and click on the 'Add Layer Mask' again.

Now we go back to your texture from the start. Bring it into your current file by going File > Place. You should now see it as a layer in your layer palette. Now drag the mask from the original head layer onto the pattern layer. Turn off visibility of the other layers and tadaa!

So now the only thing left to do is add your own flair to the piece. A very 'now' thing in graphic design at the moment is splatter effects. So that's what we're going to do! My favourite way to acheive this by using a custom brush in Photoshop. First of all you need to find a brush to use. Deviant Art is a great place to do this; just search for 'blood splatter brush' and download one you like. You need to import it into your Brushes folder which should be found in the Photoshop Program Folder > Presets > Brushes. Next, select it in the brush palette in Photoshop (click on the little arrow which looks like a play button in the palette, and select the new brush from the list). Now select the mask layer thumbnail in your layers palette and make sure your color is white! Now add some blood splatters! Check out mine.

Now actually, I'm not that happy with this one, but never mind. You can get the idea I hope. The final step is to add some color to your texture. Obviously this is optional. I prefer to do this by selecting the layer, then going Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation. Try playing with the bars, but you change the Hue value to change the overall color.

And We're Done

The final image is on the left: click on it to enlarge! I hope you found this useful/interesting. Remember, anyone can imitate, but few can originate. Check back soon for more tutorials, or let me know what you thought in the comments. Finally, a little plug - if you need some design doing, drop me an email!