Getting better with different custom brushes

I've been trying a lot to incorporate more brush variation into my paintings, and I've had some truly great results. This first one is some sort of dragon lizard that has foliage growing on it's skin. I tried several different color palettes for this one but ultimately settled for a more autumn feel. something like two and a half hours in photoshop.

Another painting from a creature thumbnail sketch, again having a little bit of the line drawing showing through in the final version. throwing a couple environment objects in here to keep it from feeling too limbo. I liked this particular bird that I made up quite a bit, and plan on doing a few more versions that feel less cartoony. I was happy with the way the colors turned out on the bird itself. reminds me a little of a toucan.

This started out as some speedpainting of a forest, but after some hue/saturation tweaks I discovered the new colors worked great for something a little "cooler" :P
only one custom brush here for the cracks in the ice, but didn't expect much from this and didn't work too much on polishing it. The bases in the background were a complete afterthought, was originally going to have some giant ice palace or something.

When messing with some adjustments on the above painting, I noticed that it took little more than a channel reverse and a little touching up to completely change it into a fiery inferno! I think I actually like it better this way. I'd like to do another painting of some underground fire pit using these colors in the future.

This painting probably stands out, as it's the only one that I used a reference for. This is a photo study of a painting by Thomas Kinkade, but I took a few liberties with colors and the mountains and I'd say I made it my own. Didn't really use the default brushes at all here, and 90 percent of it was done with a single custom oil brush. The mountains are a combo of 3 or 4 brushes. Overall, I'm very pleased with the final product and the extra time I spent here really paid off. Going to do more studies of actually paintings in the future.

Last painting in the group, and also the one that took the longest. This is funny because the thumbnail sketch that I painted over was barely developed enough to read as anything at all. I started out thinking it was some sort of goat or ox, but it ended up being some kind of baboon-ox hybrid. Very pleased with the colors here, and especially the lighting and overall detail. This is easily more polished and finished than I've gotten any previous creature or character paintings. The very organized and clean layer setup I utilized was very rewarding, and I plan to stick to that scheme for future works.

 Now for some rough work. Doing more sketches than I can possibly post in one update, but a certain class has kept me very busy with drawing. Doing mostly creature sketches in my spare time, as well as some architecture (which I don't have scanned yet) and foliage (below).