Portrait of my friend Joseph, created in PS CS4. Drawn using a photo reference. Took approx 6 hours in total 'cause I'm still pretty slow - I WILL get quicker! ONE DAY. D:<

Started by quickly plotting key points of the image. Where the eyes would go, pinpointing where areas started and ended. The drawing is done with the reference photo next to the canvas on-screen. I use a small, low opacity brush in black on a layer above a white bg, quickly but carefully marking out where the darkest of lines should go - defining lines that show the nose, the eyes, the mouth, hairline, etc etc. Then a LOWER opacity brush to begin filling in areas of shadow and depth with thin lines. Almost like unfinished crosshatching. After building a good line-work layer I created a layer above that to fill in blocks of shade with a larger, slightly soft edged brush in low opacity black, or opaque light grey with the blending mode set to multiply. Then a layer above that for highlights, also lightly added. A layer for details was added last for small areas that need touch-ups. I flattened the image and began messing with dodge and burn tools - enhancing areas of contrast, etc. Then duplicated the flattened layer and used filter>noise>median until I was happy with the effect, then blurred the median layer and reduced it's opacity. I then used a large, soft edged eraser on low opacity to erase around the middle of the face, around features that I wanted to be sharper such as eyes, nose and mouth.