The head shot in the image was taken from a black and white print. First, I placed blotting paper between the print and drawing paper. I traced the outline of tonal areas onto the drawing paper and then drew a grid over the tracing. Using the tracing with grid as a reference, I proceeded to draw in Inkscape node by node. I added color, the text, and other enhancements to create a tribute poster of Bob Marley. Original size - 26"x20".

The image isn't displaying... perhaps it's an issue with ImgShack?

I like Bob and i like your Picture much ! It is a good use of Vektorart ! Only the violet Background and this extrude Text is what i would do modify.
But Bob himself is really great !

Nice work ! I agree with coco for the text but i like the violet !

Ah, I see it now. Awesome work!

I looked the composition over and I agree that the text is too bold, too extruding, and a bit in the way. So I modified it. The text is really suggestive of his thoughts. The violet area of the background complements the green area.

Good work!
Nice poster, but I can't understand why do you need that white background around the portrait??? It makes him look like glued on some background....

Well, that's how it was in the original black and white print. He was wearing a white knitted woolen head-dress over his dreadlocks. The photo didn't give much detail in that area of the portrait and I really couldn't add what I didn't see. This is not photo realism in the purist sense of the term. The portrait has been broken down into just four basic tonal areas along with black and white.

O.K I can understand that, BUT... if you want to break the area to 4 parts make those parts look a bit similar. The white part is not smooth enought (the other parts have a perfectly smooth edges).
But if you are OK with that just ignore me its only my opinion.
Besides, as I already said, the poster is great!

Thanks for the opinion. I think I grasp what you are saying that it seems flat and there should be a bit more tonal areas in the white head-dress that would help bring out its form similar to what's happening on the white shirt. The funny thing is that I did the tracing and a full mock-up color poster done in gouache many years ago which I had them placed in storage and subsequently brought over with me when I immigrated to the USA. I no longer have the original black and white print which was borrowed. During the course of recreating this tribute poster digitally in Inkscape, I searced the web hoping to find the original print but came up short. I'll study it and see if I can add to it and also keep searching for the original print.

I also had no idea what the white was behind his head. I can appreciate the difficult situation you are in though. You could make the head-dress a different colour to his shirt, but even then I think most people will not recognise it. Although, I think those speckles on the right help. Maybe you could add more to give it an obvious knitted texture.

Wow how long did the whole creation process take? I have been wanting to make a portrait of someone for such a long time. This is great!

MavisPuford wrote:Wow how long did the whole creation process take? I have been wanting to make a portrait of someone for such a long time. This is great!

It's hard to gauge the time took in the creative process, but it's a lot of work for the method chosen to create the composition. Nodes have to be placed precisely and node handles have to be adjusted to obtain the desired curve. The beauty of a vector program like Inkscape is that you can zoom in quite beyond the original size without the image becoming pixelated and distorted in order to fine tune things.

Well guys, after studying the composition and not having the original print to reference, I added tonal areas and some texture to the head-dress to suggest its form and also to separate it from the shirt. I decided to keep the entire dress-ware white because of the desired saintly look. I think I've reached the final stage of this project.