digital painting questions

[Pandora's Eyes]

i hope this is the right place for this.

i'd like some help understanding digital painting. how do you blend colors? i'd like the finished product to look like a well blended oil painting, sort of like what you see Coro doing with real oils. i know Painter 9 can accomplish this, but how?

once you lay down the underpainting and start to apply shadows and highlights, what do you use to smooth everything over and make it look blended?

someone told me you use a "soft brush." i don't know what that means. if anyone can offer any advice or point me to a good tutorial that would be great.

more than anything i'd like to know how Android blends his colors for all those self-portraits he did, fantastic.

thanks for the help gang. peace~

[Idiot Apathy]

Well... It's not just the tools that makes a for a convincing blend but;

There is an entire section called blenders in Painter; mess around with those.
Or; turn the resaturation down to 0% on any brush (might have to crtl+b on some) and you smear around what ever color you land on.
Try different opacity settings with your blenders and brushes, and try different edge strength i.e. hard or soft.

If your looking for say a "traditional" look, try setting the resat to 0 on your favorite oil brush in painter and messing with some other settings. (Maybe some hue/value/saturation variance?)

[Pandora's Eyes]

thank you for the suggestions Apathy! i'll mess around with those settings and see what i come up with. anyone else with suggestions are more than welcome to post. i'd like to learn as much as possible.