Concept Art Progress

This is my latest piece of concept art and I'm actually extremely happy about how it turned out. 

The picture itself is based off of a tutorial that I saw about a horseman leaping over logs in a forest which made me also want to create a forest horseman scene. I haven't actually used any reference from the video other than the inspiration that it gave me upon viewing it. 

The picture itself was mapped out loosely to begin with, trying to map out rules of thirds, colour schemes and other such positions. After that I proceeded to use custom brushes to make outlines of treetops, bushes and leaves that would be littered throughout the trees and floor of the forest itself.
This was all done in grey scale, the reason behind doing everything in grey scale first was that it is a lot simpler to match colours for prospective desaturated colour theory in this way before actually having to pick true colours straight from the pallet which, for me, often causes confusion.

After I had finished the grey scale mapping I made a new layer and switched my layer type from normal to 'Overlay.'
In Overlay mode I was able to use various soft and harsher brushes to colour over the grey scale map of the work in true colour and thus was able to make a beautiful evening glow about the work. In my artwork I often prize myself with drawing at dawn or dusk as I love the colours that the sky produces when free from clouds.

I know that I still have a very long way to go before I can be truly happy with my work but I feel like I have made some sort of improvement in my work through the use of my custom brushes and grey scale work, regardless I will continue to develop and try to define my work and style into true concept art.