Hatchlings 2 Design Steps

I realize that I'm not the best artist around and I'm bad at describing how I draw but I just save these drawing steps I do for a scene on hatchlings so I think some people might interested to see..

Sketch 1: The basic sketches of what kind of background I want to make. Using 1 px black normal brush with 40% opacity, it just like sketching with pencil.
Sketch 2: Adding simple shadows to see what it might become later. Using normal black colored brush with 20% opacity.
Sketch 3: Adding more details and shadow with same techniques. Added some bricks on background using square brush with different opacity levels.
Sketch 4: Basic coloring. Just coloring above the b/w layer with normal brush, with like 40% opacity. Most of those are one colored, though on some of them, I put over another 'layers' of same color.
Sketch 5: Coloring finale. Strenghthening lines here and there, adding lights, adding darkness, etc.. two advices: 1. don't rely on dodge and burn tools-- use similar color to strengthen and/or lighten things. 2. Get rid yuour hands from eraser tool.
Sketch 6: Just adding a foreground. You might see it is copied and edited from the background ;) .
Detailed View (200%)


Some other tips:
- Don't make too much layers, it is distracting. I usually only have white background, sketch layer, color layer, and shadow layer. When I satisfied, usually I merge them into 2 layers left (sketch and color). Of course when it come about game design that needs a lot of objects, these objects have different layers.
- It took patient to make a good artwork. I make this one in like 4-6 hours and I had been drawing since little.
- Always keep a psd file, who knows someday you want to edit it? psd file make sure the image is on high quality.
- Draw on larger canvas size than what your result would be (example: if you want to make 100x100 image, it is wise to draw it on 200x200 and resize it after you finish). Or at least, draw on larger scale.
- Learn from others work. I don't mean those 1001 photoshop effects tutorial though. Flash-based drawing app like http://apps.facebook.com/graffitiwall/ allows you to replay how people use their brushes. This is a very powerful tool to learn.
- When you got money, buy a tablet. Any size will do for beginning, just make sure it is Wacom since the other products usually doesn't work as good as theirs. You can even get a bamboo wacom free if you participate in here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bamboo-By-Wacom/7616161690