Practice..

To gain experience creating Textportraits in Photoshop I created a few pieces using pictures friends offered me to work with.

They are created through guidance of this tutorial :

Cross, D. A Picture Worth a Thousand Words. Available at http://layersmagazine.com/photoshop-cs4-a-picture-worth-a-thousand-words.html [Accessed 20/11/10]

These were helpful to make because they made me consider the resolution of the image you are working with, especially as I hope to be printing some final pieces out in A2 format. Also, I tried playing round with a different background other than just plain white so added a background image of white crumbled paper. It gives an interesting effect but the striking contrast a bold white background gives is the best look to be utilised.