don't be sorry, i love chatting with people about stuff like this!! the blend tool can be super nifty for certain things and i'm sure some people use it a lot more for their specific art styles- i just prefer more control with mine. with a smudge tool you're more likely to lose edges and textures that make the face feel more 3D/tangible, i think. besides, perfect gradients can look very "digital" bc they don't usually exist that perfectly irl, and recently i've been more into digital art that still has traditional art vibes!

additionally, the smudge/blend tool is not always great for your colors. when you mix red paint and yellow paint irl, you will get a very vibrant orange color. however, when you smudge between red and yellow on a digital canvas, it will not turn orange, but create a bit of a muddy halftone to bridge the colors together (unless you are using specific drawing programs that have this functionality). this isn't always bad of course, but i am very particular about my colors, so i prefer blending manually and being able to add all the vibrancy and color variety that i want :) and it also challenges me to think more actively about how i want things to look, making me learn more!

the way i blend is simply by picking transitional colors manually. i will first roughly put colors on the canvas to resemble the general shapes and shadows, and i will keep zooming in and putting more colors and strokes on smaller areas to add more definition. then when i need to blend two parts together a bit more, i pick a nice color that lies between the two areas i need to blend together, and gently go over the transition with my brush. i always make sure to have a brush with opacity on pen pressure sensitivity for this! that way, i can press harder on areas where i want the colors to be strong, and then go very lightly over the surrounding areas to gently melt them together. i hope that makes sense! it's really all just about working from big to small first, and then deciding which areas need blending at all.

this is only how i blend for the style i've been using most; in other drawings i will depend more on crosshatching to "blend" areas together bc i use brushes with less opacity sensitivity, for a more traditional, rougher look :) but whatever technique i use, i always manually make transitional colors between areas if they're too harsh next to each other, rather than using the blend tool! i'm not saying that's how you should do it too, but it's simply what i prefer hehe