I recently did a portrait of Questlove the drummer for the Roots, who now act as the house band on Jimmy Fallon's show. The Roots are a group I really love, so I was jazzed about doing this piece. Here's a run down on some of the process.
After some thumbnailing and smaller portraits drawn from different angles to get a sense of the faces shape, a pencil sketch is worked up. The likeness needs to be on point, but it's going to drift a little and need fixing as I cut the shapes.
I block in most of the major shapers deciding what textures I want as I go along. Some take a couple of tries before I find the one I'm happy with.
More detail gets added in as the shape of the face is filled out. It's close, but something feels a little off in the likness, and will need a little tweaking as expected. One of the texture swatches I use can be seen floating in the background.
A few more details added. I wanted to make it a bit more of a current quest love image, so I threw on the glasses he tends to sport, and a little reference to the "lyin ass bitch" Michelle Bachman incident. The background is fun, but it's way to busy, and its distracting from the portrait. I do like the question mark thing though...
So simplify simply simply. I get to keep the question mark, but it becomes a subtler, more playful element, and the portrait is front and centre, where it should be. a couple more tweaks are made to the likeness, and textures are filled out in few spots.