The Blending is the thing - notes on previous painting

I think the important aspect of how I painted this one is the blending. I made sure to blend down the colors, the brush strokes, and the values by creating in-between mixes (laying one transparently over the one next to it) and then blending using carefully graduated levels of transparency. Of course the method of making the greyscale version first using the Threshold filter was also immensely helpful, especially with this particular picture, because of the very strong lighting - it's an overall fairly dark image with some very strong glaring highlights. Also, I'm going through the same transition I did with my drawing in the 80's - in the beginning I was using darks mids and lights but they were disconnected, and as I went forward I learned to integrate them into a more holistic illusion of form.