Another male subject for this work. Why clients doesn’t ask me to make a nice woman!?
I made a part of this book cover in 3d graphic ( xsi for the helmet and poser for the basic reference face ) but the most part of work was made in photoshop. I shot some reference photos for skin textures and hairs ( thanks to Lorenzo for posing ).
There’s a lot of painting in this work. The beard is totally painted too.
About the helmet : modelled by Gabriele Sina, I did texturing, lighting, shading.

Here you have some work steps,
some reference photos,
and some details:

www.aivlis-home.com/cgtalk/barbarian_warrior_making.jpg
www.aivlis-home.com/cgtalk/barbarian_warrior_photo_ref.jpg