honestly I'm going to be real, my workflow with my uses of colors is to pick a palette I think looks good and run with it. I'm glad you like it, but it's admittedly a bit lazy on my part I feel lol

I'm really glad you like it!! I kind of interpreted your reply to the original Secret Santa thread as "a piece that tells a story involving an ancient tree" so I feel like it was a really good opportunity to flex my composition muscles.

I hope the story of "an astronaut is exploring an alien planet and stumbles on an ancient tree" comes through well!
 

Brilliant use of colors

Once again thank you very much HachiKitsune!! 

Thank you!! I worked really hard on the one on the left, whereas the right side one was more filler than anything

Thank you! I'm honestly on a big sci-fi art kick lately, so of course this was a fun one with the loose parameters! I worked the most on the left side tree there, I took heavy reference from images I've seen from what many to believe to be the real world oldest tree on Earth!

I'm going to be real, I didn't really think about the relation there, I kind of just wanted a bit more visual interest in the composition, but perhaps! Or, perhaps if we're thinking about the implications of it being an alien ecosystem, it could be some kind of creature's eggs which have been adapted to appear like the substance to prevent some predators from eating them. There's a number of ways to interpret them I think, though those weren't considerations at the time of creating the artwork
 

Love the tree textures you got going on! 

I love how otherwordly this feels! The colours, textures, lighting, great job! And that tree definitely feels ancient, just like Gecimen wished for :)

I wonder, is the big green glowing thing related to the small clusters of green things? Are they the same sort of thing? If this was a comic book panel, I'd definitely want to read the rest!