Whoooo, Jordan drew an actual background!
While sketching I figured I'd just scrap the whole thing but somehow kept working on it. I am not regretting it it was a nice piece of practise. The whole thing took about 30 layers and a lot of time to get the lightning to look at least halfway decent. Only thing that's bugging me is that darned river.
Either way, shading is finally less scary, I still haven't much of an idea what I am doing but it seems to finally work out.

So the will to finally use some fireworks brushes I found turned into this. (Said brushes are by Obsidian Dawn.)

(I wonder why my non-referenced drawings turn out better than the ones I use a reference for)