Step-by-step
This challenge was really hard, I had the idea of the portrait since the beginning, but i wasn't sure how exactly I wanted to do it. I wanted to make a piece, where one half of the picture has a traditional look, and the other half is more synthetic.
At first I wanted a piece, where one half of the picture is made in ink, and the other half is a digital painting. I ran some test prints on the guides to make sure everything is aligned perfectly, I even finished the inked piece and scanned it, but the result wasn't the best.Finally I decided to make the traditional piece stand on its own, and gave it its other half.
In my second attempt I tried to replicate the traditional look on a computer, fortunately I already had the scanned in traditional piece, so I could use it as a guideline. I even scanned in a blank page, to make the picture look like an unedited scan. The other half of this is a really simple really schematic, almost blueprint like picture. I wanted it to feel like a low-poly render, to have a greater contrast between the two styles. This schematic ended up on the traditional picture, to make that one a stand-alone piece.
The third attempt was the original idea, where I scanned in the inked picture, and painted the other half digitally.
The final piece ended up completely different than the original idea, both halves are painted digitally, but one half is soft and traditional looking, and the other is smooth and a bit more refined also way more colorful.

My Deviantart page:
http://orionca.deviantart.com/