I thought that it might be interesting. Here's how I used Affinity Photo effects (they are pretty much like in Photoshop), masks and this reference image to draw game art for my Compo entry – Catchy (Sailing and Fishing sim).

At first I wanted to create some tiles to generate islands randomly, but then decided to just create a system, that will allow me to draw unique islands on demand. I spent quite some time, but that saved me a lot of time when I had to fill the game with content.

This system of masks, effects and textures allowed me to just draw form of islands on the mask – the rest was done by the editor.

Creating seamless background took some time as well, but this is a different story :)

If you like the game art or the main idea of the game (sailing using the wind and fishing using the hook as in Raft), feel free to try Catchy and rate it for the Compo:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/catchy

→ Play/rate Catchy ←

Let me know if you have any questions about the art or the game, I'll try to answer them all!