First I found an image I wanted to base the entry off of. Then I blocked in some rough objects to get an idea of the composition I wanted to go for. After that, I found some reference images of the objects that would be in the piece and use those as a guide for line art.
After the line art was done, I moved onto shading those pieces. Pretty straight forward, though I had to teach myself a lot on how to use the paint brush tool to simulate realistic gradation for certain areas.
Again, shading was based off of the reference images to keep things looking acurate-ish.
Next was the background, this bit was what I dreaded most. I have a tendency to over detail things, so it was tricky finding a nice balanced and subtle style to use for it.
This became my style guide (great web comic if you're into that stuff btw.) The ground coloration ended up being the hardest part, to the point where I gave up on simulating it and just blured the original image to the point where it looked painted (shhhhhh! don't tell anyone
) and then just added some rough line art to give it some texture without making it too distracting. The background's background was probably the simplest part but came out the best (imo). All I did was sketch in some lines and use a textured brush for leaves, then gave that a dark blue radial gradient. Behind that I added a lighter bluish-teal radial gradient to simulate the foggy expanse the original image showed.
Finally it was all put together as seen in the original image. For my first time really doing this kind of thing (Ok, I did
one other piece for practice before this. Otherwise, walked into digital painting pretty new to it all!) I am really satisfied with the end result. I'll probably keep doing stuff like this in the future, considering doing a web comic too!