So I've gone less ambitious, took some tutorials for photoshop, and came up with this...
(http://www.image-upload.net/files/4338/backgroundpractise.jpg)
C&C please
Looks pretty nice, actually. The saturation is probably a bit high, but if you're going for cartoonic style, that's ok.
You'll want to fix the water. It is too detailed near the horizon for that far away. Looks like a blue crystal wall. I think the water is maybe too high for that perspective, but there is not that much to judge it by.
Redraw the water, maybe read up on how Miez from the FoY-team draws it in his tutorial at barnettcollege.com (http://barnettcollege.com). Also, get rid of the noise-filter on the tree and the stone - it only works on the flat grass. Apart from that, it's better than your last piece.
Thanks everyone
I just found the barnettcollege tutorial - haven't read it yet so it looks like I'll be following his tutorial very soon heh
Ne ways I tend to still have a habit of resorting to the noise filter - but is there a tutorial of how to render stones/trees?
Good job on this on. See you did follow my words. Good job. Great improvement. This could get a 7/10 easily.
Wow, that's quite an improvement. The colors are pretty good, and the shading across the stone, tree, and water really helps.
If you want to suggestions on how to draw better stones or trees, here's my two cents. Focusing on texture probably won't yield results quickly at this point. I think the next step is working on your shapes and lighting a bit. Just do a few extremely loose, quick sketches from real life. Don't worry about getting everything looking perfect. The point is to start thinking about things in a deeper way- as in, "Where is the light coming from?" or "What sort of style does the stone or tree have?"