Digital Painting

Remember when I was trying to learn to be a stronger digital painter?  Well,  I gave up on that at one point.  It was for multiple reasons.  Somewhere near the top of the list was major frustration in getting the look I wanted.
Anyway, I got this commission to do a portrait (as seen above) and they wanted to digitally painted.  So, here I am struggling with the frustration of digital painting in Photoshop, when I stumbled upon a new brush (to me, not to photoshop) and it did EXACTLY what I wanted.  So, after about four failed attempts at getting this to look right, I got it to look right.  So here is a successful digital portrait for a relocating boss.  Who was apparently loved by his company.