Heres a painting i did this week with a lot of free time. I played around with different rendering techniques. The goal was to paint tightly, don't know if i succeeded. I blurred out a lot of parts of the body that wasn't quite important, though it gave the piece another effect entirely. I created a "freckle/skin tone" brush but used it very very subtley since i wanted her skin to be very soft and un-scathed, but i used it to break up the skin tones for a realistic feel. I managed to get a subsurface scattering effect on the skin in some areas with some PS layer/brush effects. The background was made with many various layers of strokes, painterly gesso like layers, and a paper texture to break up the area. For technique reference, i was mainly looking at LindaB's tutorials on rendering. I dont believe it turned out as much of like her work, shes just a master as what she does ^_^.
Overall, i think this was a good learning piece for me.
PS i used photo ref from characterdesign.com, and is kinda friends with the model from another forum site.