how this happened

So I noticed I had a billion versions of the kukri thing all over my computer and dropbox, and because of that I could kind of make this really..........involved process thing of this painting.

So we start with what I posted a few weeks ago, a sad attempt at skin color over the pink value sketch. Just an overlay layer or something.

I thought that was too pink so I tried to make it more brown, I initially was trying to make her darker skinned, but it wasn't working. :/

 Here is where I started trying to paint over more aggressively and the skin lightened up, mostly because I couldn't get the values right and I just went with pale as the driven snow, haha. The next skips some steps but I just painted over everything, I just kind of picked at it for a few days. I realized her face wasn't working for the 'third dimension' so I had to redo it. I didn't follow my initial value sketch at all as I have a hard time with that process for some reason and tend to just jump right into using color. Even though I really tried not to do that here. :C

Here's pretty close to final, I spent most of my time on the face.

After some texture stuff and some layer effects, HERE WE GO.

and that's how you probably shouldn't do things.

BONUS:

a little bird I found in an old psd