Blood will Flow

That smudge tool is evil. I used Photoshop for almost twenty years, and I'm still not sure what legitimate purpose that tool serves.

Unfortunately while Photoshop is an amazing program for photo manipulation and graphics, it's only by accident that it works as a digital painting program. Hopefully you'll soon ease into it or find a program better suited to your style.

Have you tried something like Corel Painter? I've never used it, but I've read excellent reviews of that one.