I made two gradients one for the snow and one for the sky.
I used the trees in the photo as reference for these painting in these "cartoon" trees
step 2 of 12
Tree painting
step 3 of 12
tree painting
step 4 of 12
tree painting, all tree painting was down w/ drybrush at different sizes and pressure/opacity
step 5 of 12
tree painting & adding snow
step 6 of 12
more snow
step 7 of 12
circle selections filled with circular gradients, the bottom two were warped to make them not as round.
step 8 of 12
start of face
step 9 of 12
Start sketch of girl, Started on arm, and some detailed to the nose. (see final sbs image for sections of picture for where parts of the textures came from to start, after the shapes were done, sorry I was not very good at making sbs'es yet when I made this)
step 10 of 12
warping, painting, shading
step 11 of 12
more of the same
step 12 of 12
selections were made of the snowman for texture, etc for the image.