Using a loose adaptation of the Loomis method I lay in the basic shapes for the head, and roughly sketch in shapes to mark out the shape of the hair, neck and any other features I want to include at this point. (its important to keep things loose at this point and try not to invest too much time into detail, it will likely change during the rest of the process)

Add detail and refine the lines of the sketch. I go back and forth with my sketch brush and eraser at this point (I prefer to keep my lines somewhat messy and loose, it adds texture and life to the drawing. having super clean line art can sometimes make it look stiff and flat)

Add shading. I used red in this portrait to compliment the skin tone I intended on using. (tip: never shade with Black, to get more vibrant colors in your painting, use more reds, blues, purple or magenta for shading or shadows)

Lay in some random colors for the background, in this case I used some blue, purple and a little bit of gold(yellow), then very roughly on a separate layer add the skin tone and hair color. I let some of the background bleed through to give it a somewhat painterly look.

This is an optional step that I thought is worth noting, Lock pixels or use alpha lock on your line art layer and color the lines using the colors surrounding those lines (Saturate your colors slightly and set the blend mode on your layer to multiply for a nice effect)

Adding more color to the background with a textured brush to fill it out and create some more texture, I used a slightly desaturated tan brown in this instance to create the illusion of an underpainting on a traditional canvas.

Adding more background elements, the dream catcher specifically. I used a default chalk brush and a reddish brown color for this and just erased some parts to give it more texture. Again setting the blend mode to multiply so that it inherits and darkens the colors from the background.

Added flowers, the piece was missing something at this point so I decided to add these flowers. They are on 2 separate layers with a normal blend mode. I tried to use more orange and yellows at this point to compliment the blues used in the painting. #Complimentary colors. 

On a layer set to the color dodge blend mode, using a saturated red I brush over the portrait to bring out some more reds in the face. I use a soft round brush or air brush for this step and keep the layer opacity set to about 30%

Flatten, apply filters and sharpen the image, there are a number of ways to do this, I prefer using the Camera Raw Filter in photoshop to apply filters and to sharpen the image. its quite intuitive and requires a minimal amount of steps to complete. (Shift +CTRL +A in photoshop)

And that’s it!

Hope this was helpful.