Hi guys, long time.

Friend died and trying to look at using Xara to design a tribute collage, with an artistic rendering of faces and elements of the person's life.

My go-to strategy on this is TG member Big Frank- tracing and vectorizing the face and other elements, and filling them with some watercolor splashes.

http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthre...aitphoto/page2

Then I add more elements other than just the face to create an expressive montage.

So it ends up looking OK, but a bit flat and pedestrian. I add layers of very light dots and splashes to add depth.

What I'm not good at is drawing and using brushes to really achieve a next-level hand-painted, or hand-sketched look.

Take a look at this guy-

http://neo-innov.deviantart.com/gallery/?catpath=/
https://www.behance.net/neo_innov

especially this one:

http://neo-innov.deviantart.com/art/...pt-4-178061580

So what I see is light whisps of edges and mixed media (text, paint, lines, faces, script, etc), layered and composited to evoke an emotion, to describe the totality of the event or person portrayed. This would be great to remember a friend at a funeral, for the family to see a life and a personality.

How can I use Xara's brush facility (which I never use) to achieve this look?
Whatever I try with brushes to add some artistic watercolor texture and suble fill-elements ends up looking like 3rd grade amusement.

Any insight, tactic, method, hint, youtube tutorial link, etc would be most welcome. Need to get out of my box in time for when this is needed!
Thanks