I think I finished it... I think.
This is the painting I was working on since the summer began. (you can see the 12hr WIP post here). So I guess its taken me about 1.5-2 weeks to finish this, though I didn't work on it everyday.

The process was so long but I'll note some techniques I used: I researched Studio Ghibli scenery images and background paintings from amazing Ghibli artists (such as Kazou Oga) and also general Ghibli screenshots to get inspired. When I first started working on this, I didn't know what it was going to look like but I just felt like painting the floating castle Laputa. Then to get a good background idea, I copied and pasted 'test' images from google onto my Laptop canvas on SAI to get a concept of what I wanted. After slowly eliminating the scenes that didn't work, I finally settled on these images: Hills and Clouds
Doing it like this allowed me to get the right image in my head and continue with the background. :) I also added a girl in the foreground.
Big mistake though... I didn't notice (and when I did, I was too lazy to correct myself) while I followed the references that I had made the light shine on the right side of Laputa and the girl, the grass and clouds were getting hit with light on the left side XD Oops. I was really annoyed at it but finally with my sisters' help, I experimented and was able to cut up Laputa like a puzzle and switch it around without a lot of effort (and I easily redid the girl).
OH I also used a couple textures for this artwork as well that helped me in a major way, especially with the grass!
Another thing, I had a dog in the picture but I decided to remove it afterwards. THANKYOU for reading all that, if you did^^

Dedicated to Pennguin!! She made a very helpful comic which ended up helping me a ton when I was stuck on this painting! I finally tried a Luminosity layer and that was just what I needed! Thanks Hanatan/Yumei/Pengu-chan!!!! Love u <3

MangaKid(c) Art
Studio Ghibli(c) Laputa