not really a tutorial thing

I wouldn't call this a tutorial really, it's more of a progression from start to finish -- so you can all laugh at how ugly my initial images are when I paint in Painter! I actually planned to put this up ages ago, but only recently found my snapshots again.

Here are the five brushes that almost never leave my most recent brush window in Painter 7:

Oil pastel, bit of blend, possibly my favourite brush to use
Digital airbrush, set to no min/max size %age (size doesn't deviate)
Palette knife, set to paint colour
Cover pencil (sometimes I use the scratchboard tool too, both with the min brush size at lowest %age) - I use this to sketch and paint in detail; it's set to opaque.
and... eraser, both soft and flat

Anytime I'm unsure of what to do with an area, I make a new layer, then when I'm happy with it I mudge it down onto the base layer I'm awful at keeping a clean ink layer above colour, as I invariably end up painting all over the ink layer too.
Mostly, I tend to put the light colours over the dark colours to highlight like gouache, but it varies.

detail shots (actual res):

[link] <--- yaya, it's amazing how messy you can get away with being
[link] <--- god, it's a good thing I didn't have anything else to do on the train.