I have Painter 7 which I use all the time and love. I can get really creative with so many of the features. For this picture, I started with a small misc. photo, using the clone/trace feature to outline the shapes. Then I used various brushes to fill in the skin tones especially using the "just add water" brush to smooth and blend.
For the hair, I used the "large distorto brush" to swirl and blend the colors.
For the dress, I created a pattern using a snowflake like design I made with the "Growth" esoterica tool. Then layered the shapes for the etherial look for the dress.
The man's suit was created using pen tool shapes and paper textures that resembled cloth.
Background was another pattern and surface texture experiment.