Creative Picture->Photoshop/Painter combo

In this piece we started with a regular photograph (far left) in photoshop. Retouching blemishes, blurring skin, darkening and lightening hot spots (middle).
Next we take the touched up photo to painter and start cloning, i used oil cloners mostly, i left a brush stroke look on the outside to eliminate the background distractions. I wasn’t totally satisfied with some details so i took the final painter image back into photoshop, and put the (middle shot) as a layer on top. I masked in certain areas around the mouth, eyes and nose i wanted to be photographic crisp. I finished off by cleaning the reflections on the eyes.