I forgot to upload the December step-by-step (Patreon)
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Anyway, I started this with the intention of trying a painterly geometric-esque background inspired by:
https://www.instagram.com/stephaniestutz/
http://ieafy.tumblr.com/tagged/ieafy+draws
Rough thumbnail. I don't think I used any particular photo as a reference but I did spend a lot of time googling pictures of sunrise/sunset on snow.
The sketch I doodled for the thumbnail somehow ended up neat enough to line over, so I went straight into inking. I don't do this very often (I think I should credit inktober for giving me neater initial sketches and the confidence to ink over not-quite-perfect sketches.
Laying down some initial colours. When colouring this I decided to use one brush only (a square oil brush I got from the DAUB set I'm always talking about) because attempting to stylize backgrounds is something I'm very unfamiliar with and I thought it would be best to limit myself to only one brush in an attempt to focus on shape only, not texture.
More laying on colours. I like going from dark to light, it feels almost like I'm sculpting out the shape of whatever I'm painting. At this point pretty much every different colour is on a different layer.
More painting. I started to regret my decision to use only one brush for colouring about now (I think a big part of what I admire about the artists listed above is their use of textures), but I decided to persevere and learn whatever I could from the experience.
More lighting. From memory this was when I started using a few overlay layers for the lighting. Since I'd mostly laid down the basic colours at this point I think I also started adding detail on a new layer on top of everything.
Started colouring Sunati and Austen, I think shading was done on a multiply layer or two.
Lighting painted on top.
And a few more details - some extra colour added on an overlay layer, then another layer on top of that to paint in the details.
And done! I still regret not having used textured brushes for this - oh well, next time!