Tutorial with brushes, gradients and loads of layers

I hope there's someone out there who's dying to know how to make this icon, because I love making people happy.



The screencap I chose comes from War of the Ring. You can find it here.

I cropped and resized it and smudged out (smudge tool, you'll find it under the dodge tool) the lines of the building in the background. This is what I got:



The smudged area doesn't look very good, but we'll fix that with brushes. It looks way too dark now, and there's not enough contrast for my likes. I duplicated the background layer three times, and set the top layer to soft light and the other two to screen. I decided to desaturate the top layer for even more contrast (adjust, hue and saturation, hue/saturation/lightness; set the saturation to about -60). The base now looked like this:



That looks... weird. But we're going to work on that! Underneath the desaturated layer, create a new raster layer. Fill it (flood fill tool) with #383E2F, a dark green colour, and set it to exclusion. Yes, I know most people use a blue layer and set that to exclusion, but I wanted to see how green looked and it turned out rather pretty. So this is what it looked like:



Nice. I was happy with that. Time to spiffy it up. Above raster 3, the desaturated one, I created a new layer and filled it (flood fill tool) with this gradient by crumblingwalls:



I set the blend mode to soft light. Then I duplicated the layer with the gradient on it and set that layer to hard light at 40% transparency, and was quite satisfied with what I got:



Now, for more colour, I added another gradient by crumblingwalls (on a new layer, obviously):



I set the blend mode to multiply at 30%. The outcome:



Yay pretty! I figured that would do. Time for brushes. I wanted some texture in the air on the left, so I used one of gegenschein's amazing splatter brushes:



Always apply brushes on a new layer! I applied it in a dark orange colour, #704D02, and set the transparency to 40%.



Almost invisible, but that's the great thing about those splatter brushes: you barely notice them, but you miss them when they're gone. Woopah! Anyway. I created a new raster layer for another brush, by sinecure, namely this one:



I used it with a greenish colour, #40401C, and set it to overlay at 55% transparency. That made my icon look like this:



Almost finished with the brushes. I wanted to add something delicate to it, so I picked one of quebelly's real media brushes:



Le pretty. I added it in black, obviously on a new layer, and set it to darken. I wasn't very happy with that, and decided to mirror the layer. Now Faramir's face was almost free of lines, except the part on the cheek, which I erased (eraser tool). Looked pretty good to me:



Now. Borders. I added a grungy border by milk:



Using the green again (#40401C). I checked the "wet look paint" box that should be somewhere around your paint brush settings - I can make a screencap if you don't find it. I erased the parts that covered Faramirs mouth. This is what I got:



That should've made me very happy, but I was stubborn and added another border, namely one of quebelly's thin borders, because they rock my socks.



Added it (on a new layer, yes.) once again in the same colour. Make sure you uncheck the "wet paint look" box. That looked like a nearly finished icon to me:



Now all I did was add text. I think I used Times New Roman at size 8, might be smaller, I'm not sure. I set the vector layer to darken at 70% transparency, et voila:



Enjoy your iconing, and if there's something you don't understand, feel free to ask. Feedback would be great, since this is my first ever tutorial. The icon is up for grabs if you credit parrotcake. *bows* Thank you, goodnight!