It's an image from a game called Gears of War, and the original image was part of a publicly released pack for people to use on fan websites. It's too large to "attach" to this post, so here are links to ImageShack.

Original: http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/9052/gearsfx4.jpg
Painted Version: http://img368.imageshack.us/img368/4909/gearspainting1og9.jpg

I used a Photoshop action to get started, then I did a lot of brushwork to make it look like a painting.


EDIT: critiques please!

Welcome!

What an interesting idea to take what is essentially a computer drawn image already and make it look like a painting. :) It gives me a few ideas.

I take it you are using a mouse to do this? It must have been time consuming. If you really like doing this, you might want to consider getting a tablet (I have a cheap wacom 4x6 and don't know how I did without it now).

I quite like the look of your work (and I am partial to anything with pink in it). You may want to search out other photoshop plugins and brush presets to experiment with different looks. I warn you, this is totally addicting.

You might also want to look at a technique called smudging and a nifty link to a great tutorial was shared here last week by one of the mods which you can find here...

http://www.nikoncafe.com/vforums/showthread.php?t=84461

Yup, still using a mouse. I'm getting a Wacom tablet for Christmas, which will be a huge help. I intentionally went for a non smooth-looking image. I recently finished a painting of Arwen from Return of the king that is smoother, and I left the background a bit rougher. Am I allowed to post that here, b/c I'd really like some feedback on it. Thanks for the tutorial link

Well, I think it's cool to play with any image to your hearts content but my true opinion is that the orignial image is so amazing and the details so perfectly rendered that the redo pales in comparison. What makes retouching and photoshop wonderful to me is that you can take a mediocre image and make it great, or push a near-perfect image over the top.
This doesn't mean stop playing of course.... this is how we fill our toolboxes, so keep it up!