I had been working on a project of floating islands, and I had this image but nothing to do with it. 

Where we begin

Cute, but meh. The colors are nothing to write home about and overall there's nothing more to offer than a lonely pine on a rock defying gravity.

Leveling Up Colors

After taking Level Up Your Colors! by Hayden Aube, I came up with this color change. It's a great class- you should take it.

Yay! Better colors! Except the background, that is not an complimentary color to what I'm working with. So I decided to work backwards and create a better background including textures.

Introducing textures

It took a second to get used to the textures- I kept getting this weird tan mixed in with the sprinkles, and it was frustrating, but then something happened and it went away. No idea what it was, but glad it's gone.

Working backwards (AKA figure out your background while you're making your main image)

So I love legend of zelda, and I really wanted something like Forest Haven in Windwaker. Fireflies, light haze, and maybe some filtering light coming down. Overall, using a lot of gaussian blur, outer glow, and transparencies with layers and layers of textures and colors, I came up with this. I'm pretty happy with it- I think I might continue to work on it in the future, but for now, it's good. 

Thank you for the awesome class, Hayden! Working with textures is a lot more easy and fun than I thought! Looking forward to more classes from you! :)

Tatiana