Sunset and Silver

Time for my utter lack of training and range of talent to show through! I rarely draw backgrounds. Almost never, really. I think the last time I drew a proper background (outside of art class) was YEARS ago. So this picture marks a few firsts for me...first time I tried to do the background entirely from scratch, and also the first time I've done a piece 100% on the computer, start to finish. The figure was easier than I thought it might be, but that's mainly because I've gotten more comfortable with my tablet; the sketch-to-lineart process was fairly simple.

The background...not quite so simple! Though I have learned some things from this:

1 - It'll be best to put all the trees and bushes on separate layers next time - having all of them on one layer made things really messy.
2 - While there are some good brushes for natural textures, if I'm lazy with them the result looks awful (ex: small rocks near water)
3 - Water is HARD.
4 - Convincing perspective? Possibly even more difficult than water.

But at least it was a success in that I tried new things, and am now confident that drawing something 100% via tablet/Photoshop is very possible for me and not as hard as I was expecting. Victory!