From clouds to the beginnings of skin tones

For the clouds, I start with big brush strokes then smooth them with a blending brush.  Then I layer more paint on top to create depth.  I use white with a touch of greyed down blue to create shadows in the clouds.

My pattern is to work on the objects that are in the background first, and work my way to the foreground.  Since the clothing is over the skin and the unicycle is in front of the clothes, I'll work in that direction (though not shown here, I've already painted the chair that he is sitting in).  This is the first layer of skin tone color - still pretty monochromatic, but beginning to look more like flesh than a pumpkin.  At this point, I think it looks particularly ghoulish, which is pretty appropriate for this Halloween season. We'll call this stage "Zombie Alex."   Note the finished clouds in the background.