The Terminator Poster Work in Progress

I wanted to enter into a Terminator Fan Design Contest and do a digital painting inspired by pulp magazine covers and 80's movie poster art. This is my first ambitious digital painting, I usually color line art in Adobe Photoshop as opposed to doing painting techniques. I had to turn in a work in progress to meet the contest deadline, but I still wanted to complete the piece, which I'll update until I finish the whole poster.

 I start by laying down the tonal range using grayscale,

I tend to keep everything very dark and work up the lights.

 I use a layer set to color layer mode and start to add hue to the grayscale.

I start to render the details for different areas of the painting.

I focused rendering the Hunter Killers and sky of the background.