Pressure Sensitive

"Pressure Sensitive" (16x20) o/p 

There are a number of ways to achieve a variety of textures in a painting, but the first thing to consider is what you're after and the surface it requires...  In the painting above, it's the 'appearance' of texture on a smooth gesso'd panel...more of an optical illusion in this case than actual physical surface relief. This painting was done mostly in one afternoon with some tweaking the next morning (and it's more about the attitude and action, not finessing an abundance of details).

The brushes used were all synthetic flat sables, in three sizes... The dry-brush highlight stroke in the middle of her forearm is a good example of the kind of broken colour effect you can achieve on a smooth surface without shoveling on a boat-load of paint. 

 

Of course, painting a woman's skin requires at least some passages of smooth blending, and the wet into wet technique with the sable brushes served well for this purpose.  I also wanted to exploit the surface texture a bit given the nature of the subject's action, so a little variety of additional dry brush helped to achieve that end.

In this case it was the panel's surface prep that dictated the approach I chose -- like your individual style; sometimes the one you end up with chooses you, instead of the other way around...