Sometimes a particle, sometimes a paint

I've been using almost exclusively the Heavy Flow, Dry Edges oil brush and the Chalk brush. Love the way they work together! Chalk brush looks like pastels on rough paper, little dots that build up - it's neither a hard nor a soft edge really. The oil brush has a rectangular shape and a similar edge, but rather than being made of dots is has tiny little holes in it that get more profuse toward the edge. But it comes across as a solid brush with a hard edge compared to the chalk brush. So using both, paint behaves sometimes as a particle, sometimes as a pint - little quantum contrast there, and in close up it looks a heck of a lot like some of the Renaissance paintings I've seen closeups of. I love the way they play against each other.

The skin tones need some cool colors though!! And everything except the arm needs to be brought up to that level of workmanship.

Oh, and I said this in the last mega-post, loaded with 3 days' worth of process pics and observations, but I want to put it here where it isn't so buried.

I found a technique that results in the painterly look I've been after for so long. The arm was looking too smooth and almost airbrushy, too much chalk brush applied too carefully. Made a new layer, scribbled in some slashed marks using the oil brush, and pasted it down as a Soft Light layer. Instant visible brushstrokes! And since I originally did them fully opaque or nearly so, they don't have that weird too-thin look that plagues my older brushwork.