I duplicated the layer on the final pic and then blurred it, then took out the areas of the second layer on her hair and eyes to make them more sharp, the rest is intenionally blurred to give it a softer look. Well, that's what I was going for at any rate.
Her stomach is built from layers of skin tone paint, and layer upon layer of shading, blurring, fading, highlighting, blurring, fading instead of burning and dodging over the base color.
Thanks for the kind words on the sai. I wished later I had done the inscriptions on it, but I kind of didn't think of that when I was drawing it and shading it, I was just trying to get it to look real enough to fit into the pic.