The next thing to finalise was the background. I quickly went back to my reference material and picked out a few elements that I thought would make interesting additions to my illustration. I started from the top, adding the waterfall first and suggesting some rock faces in the background. I then worked my way down creating the vines and tree roots that all act as guides to lock the eye onto the central figure. I added texture to the foreground tree using another custom brush (Fig B), and gave its surface a 3-dimensional look by zooming in and picking out individual highlights with a three pixel brush. Another custom brush provided instant vegetation at the base of the tree and on the opposite bank; these were some of the last touches I needed to make.

Finally it was time to zoom out and remove any traces of the original line work. Once that was complete I flattened the image and used the colour dodge tool to add a saturated glow around the background light source. This helped to dramatically increase the atmospheric depth and help tie the foreground and background elements together. It was during this process that I realised that something was missing from my autumn scene: falling leaves! I created a new layer and started to draw in some leaves based on my reference photographs, but they ended up looking too realistic and didn't fit in with the style of the illustration. So instead I created a new custom brush in the basic shape of a leaf, set the shape and angle to vary with pressure, and set the spacing to maximum. Then, with a few strokes and a bit of motion blur, I had a nice set of floating leaves to give the image a more dynamic feel. Finally, I flattened the image and used the sharpen tool bring out the highlights on her face and on her outfit. Then it was time to sit back and admire my Autumnal scene...