Sugar Skull Dean

[amberdreams]

Ok, I confess I'm quite excited. I've just finished my first 'proper' digital painting - not a line in sight (not even under-sketching)! Well, apart from the decorative sugar skull design on his face, but that doesn't count. I'm talking painting and no lines for emphasis or structure. It's experimental but I think it worked? I'm really pleased with how his eyes turned out, anyhow.
Teaser

This is for thursdaysisters, who wanted something to go with her spn_joystick fic game has been re-released as a straight story, for people like me who don't want to schlep through a game. (((Hugs to her for that!))). Also you must check out quickreaver's companion art of Sam - he's so beautiful!!
So here he is, sugar skull Dean for Flowers for Santa Muerte


Process
I started painting in Corel Paint Essentials because I had no idea how to start in PS, and Corel felt more like using a paintbrush somehow. So I got some base colour down and it looked like this, but without the card background, which I added in PS.

Corel doesn't have a blending/blur tool like Sai so I saved it as a .psd file and transferred to PS, where I just used two basic brushes, one fuzzy one sharp, at different opacities to build up the painted layers.

Kept layering the 'paint' and then added a nice red background

Once that was in place and after adding the sugar skull design I duplicated part of his face then put that layer on soft light, which brought out the shadows and made him stand out better against the dark red.

I know it's still a bit unfinished looking, but I didn't want to fiddle too much more, plus I kind of like that you can see the brush strokes. I certainly wasn't trying for photo realism!

I did try reapertownusa's hint about using the healing brush to blend, and it worked (up to a point). Thanks again, petal!

Concrit, hints and tips gratefully received!