Zombified

Happy New Year everyone! First painting of the year done! This was for the AIB art blog, the theme was Hangover :P This was fairly quick (quick is a relative word but this was about 2 - 3 hours I think). Its easier to do portraits than full figures in my opinion, there is less to work on and so you can spend time detailing things (though I could have gone in and did more), and its easier to do zombies or other creatures than humans as you have more license to go wild. OK... moving out tomorrow... I'll talk through the process a bit for you...
1) This is a wip of another painting Ive been working on. With not many defined forms in the painting I took this as a basis for a new painting. I had to manipulate it a bit, putting an overlay gradient on to change the background composition into some sort of erm... gradient! And using colour balance to shift it all to a bit of green so it will look a bit more sickly to go with the zombie feel.
2) Quick sketch to get the structure of the drawing down (the foundation for the painting). Hinting at what the colour is. Not too worried about values just yet, when I figure out what colour things are I can add value and the final colours afterwards.
3) Added a side light. Its something I havent done much but seen it used well a lot of times so this was a new thing I tried out. Every piece I do I try to do something new and so learn something from it. Also started to paint in some values.
4) Painted in more values and blended some colours. For example... the cheek close to us. If it was as sharp as it was in the previous step it wouldnt look like its curving like a cheek.
5) Upped the contrast. Painted the drool/puck with a brush and then duplicated that layer and fiddle with the blend option till a satisfying result comes up.
6) This is the easy fun part. The painting is pretty much done. But you can play around with different settings to see what happens. I found a colour balance that made a more dynamic skin tone and so I went with that but erased into it to not effect the background. I also changed the silhuette of the neck a bit more. Then I add a smart sharpen filter and a noise filter. And we are done!