Re: With verve into the light
I mostly actually paint completely dry or with only a tiny bit of fluidity. Blending I vary between smudge and average, depending on what feels more important. In the beginning it's mostly just smudging, but later for some more controlled blending, average is easier. However, from there on, you can always go out into crazy land very easily and do wild strokes for backgrounds or certain places, even play with fluidity where it might serve you well.
You can actually go all the back to a PS style brush with #1, too, control the feathering of it with the bias...and since I've added the image brush, there's almost no limit anymore to what style you want to pursue on the fly.