Step by Step Painting

Still experimenting with 'painting'. This is in no way meant to be a tutorial - I'm still trying to work out what to do myself. So if anyone has any tips I'd love to hear them.

First I took one of my pen sketches from Norway and loosely painted over the top of it using three or four different shades. Sometimes I squinted my eyes to get a stronger contrast and see the modeling more clearly...

I then added a new layer with it's blending mode set to 'color'. This allowed me to tint the value painting underneath...

I then added a new layer - without any blending mode - and painted a few more details in - picking colours from the painting with the eyedropper...

I then took it into photoshop to tweak the levels. Art Rage does have a basic brightness and contrast slider but it's more controllable in PS. I was surprised how lacking in contrast my original painting was. Perhaps I should have painted a scale first...

Back in Art Rage I added a few more details - adding the green grass really helped the paiting I think...

Finally I added my favourite rusty metal texture to the topmost layer - blend mode 'Hard Light' and opacity 24%. It adds a bit more texture and varies the colours a bit...

Yesterday I thought the above image was finished but looking at it again today perhaps the colour and contrast could be pushed further - or is it too far?...