Colouring process

 After I had divided my painting into different sections and layers I worked on the rest of the digital painting process. In the image below you can see the flat colours that I used when creating the composition in the painting. The value of the tree is something I wanted to keep so I decided to work on the detailing and shading using multiply layers.

 The nest step in the process was to create a believable tree texture on the individual layers. I did this using a multiply layer using varying shades of grey to help give it depth

After that I wanted to darken the areas on the tree that would be facing away from the sun. This was done using the same technique as before but with a larger brush to create a large area of shade.

After this I brought in some colour. As this section will be the darkest as it is both in the shade and closest to the viewer I decided to go with a desaturated brown with hints of a lighter brown towards where the light would be hitting

Lastly I went in with a Hard light layer to bring in where the light from the sun would be hitting the tree. I wanted the light to look effective so I limited it to a small part of the tree and then blended the lighting out.

 This is the general process that I have used on the first few layers and will continue to use throughout the rest of the piece. This way I can ensure that there's still enough contrast between layers and that when the camera moves through the scene the sense of depth will be maintained.