Hello Rab ,, you have the main requirement to produce good paintings , enthusiasm , because it takes practice , practice and more practice , this thread has loads of links and tips and has developed into a hive of learning if you pursue it , if someone thinks this is easy to produce the quality Brad does they are in for a suprise , even with the technique in front of them its not easy to get real quality , most people that pick it up quick are people that were good before they started with the technique Brad uses , they were allready nearly there , the images throughout the thread say it is not easy , even with the holy grail of digital painting , sorry Christina I could help myself 
This technique in itself is very basic and is the easiest part believe it or not , and that is its appeal especially for photographers ,, what is not conveyed is developing your eye , this is what takes all the effort and time , learning to see properly is when your art comes together and stands out , its like the academic that knows PS like the back of his hand but carnt produce a thing because nothing inspires him , he will sit stairing at a blank screen waiting for PS to do it for him , its for this reason that I would not do a DVD like Brad and I have been asked a plenty , for what I would like to pass on to people would take me too long to produce and at this stage I dont consider myself qualified or of high enough standard .
Enough of my ravings Rab , you want some ideas , well for my own learnings , and man Im only scratching the surface and have so far to go , I look at a lot of art very very closely , I zoom in and scour every inch of something I admire , there is much to see in the small things within a painting , I am in awe of artists like Boris Vallejo and Luis Royo and the work of Frank Frazetta in the 40s is amazing , this stuff is not pushing a few pixels around like us hackers , it is enlightening art of the highest form , but you and me can learn much from these masters , their use of stroke , its direction , color composition light shade mood its all there , lots of information withing a painting if you know where to look .
I have also spent a lot of time with the work of traditional painter John Sargent , his use of light is wonderfull , the short of it all is to look at lots of art you like very closely .
I have already listed many of the DVDs that I have and you will learn from all of them , I have many books on traditional portrait painting , too many to list , I also subscribe to Imagine FX magazine which is full of rare hard to find digital painting information and well worth the price .
Hope Ive given you some direction to expand on , contrary to what some think Im not trying to rain on anyones parade just freely trying to help people produce better art .
http://vallejo.ural.net/
http://members.fortunecity.com/gabriella66/royo.html
http://www.frazettaartgallery.com/ff/index.html
http://jssgallery.org/Major_Paintings/Major.htm
http://www.imaginefx.com/
Some nice tutorials in the tut section
http://www.furiae.com/index.php?view=gallery
http://www.henningludvigsen.com/wordpress/?page_id=22
http://www.henningludvigsen.com/wordpress/?page_id=203
Some good forums
http://community.imaginefx.com/forums/
http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/
http://www.wetcanvas.com/
http://www.geocities.com/~jlhagan/advanced/menu.htm
Regards Rod
