As I said in the description...because of some not so good resolution feather areas I had to select only one piece (the clearest one, in my opinion).
I used only this piece to recreate the hair.
step 2 of 22
This is the image of a lion statue that I used.
I duplicated the layer, desaturated it and changed the blending mode to hard light, in order to get some shadows and highlights as reference.
Using the selection I started playing with warping, resizing, flipping and came up with different hair shapes.
As I created more shape I blended them into each other using layers masks.
I really wanted details so you can imagine it did take quite a lot layers to reproduce hair texture as good as possible.
I also sharpened some pieces of hair.
In this step you can see how I started with the face.
I got more thinner hair pieces and warped them more curved for some areas which I intented to only slightly reveal later on.
In this particular step you can see how I started with the left side. (Same methods as described in step 5)
Main part of the hair. This part wasn't going to be permanent in the final result as I found some areas too alike....so I decided to add more fur....later on...!
Added extra fur on some areas that I wasn't satisfied with and blended them better.
Also selected eyes using the eliptical marquee tool, duplicated layer, changed blending mode to screen, added gaussian blur to get a vibrant look.
I removed the backround by using a soft black brush on top of the unwanted parts and I shaped the eyebrows better using....of course....my favourite tool: the warp tool.
This is how it looked after I changed the blending mode of the grey layer to overlay.
I also added some very fine red veins on the eyes using a free lightning brush colorized in red.
Added backround and a gradient adjustment layer to it (from orange to blue). Changed blending mode for the gradient layer to color and lowered opacity for more realistic tones.
I also darkened some areas around the eyes using the burn tool.
Here I decided to add a smoother effect.
I used a strange combination of filters: sponge and watercolor. Changed blending modes to soft light and lowered opacities slightly.
Here I added the light coming from the right side using a soft yellow gradient and a free light beams brush. I also added gaussian blur, duplicated layer and changed blending mode to screen usually used to pop up lights.
As I analyzed my image I wasn't happy with the way the fur blended somewhere near the eye and mouth, so I selected again a part that looked better, copied and blended it with the rest of the fur.