Started this image with more natural colors, but didn't like the results I was getting... so manipulated the Layer Blend Modes for each layer that I had in green and brown. Tried to keep the same feel of the clip art image, which looks like it might have been a watercolor rendered with a tight foreground and more of a wash background.

It took twelve layers to get just the image ... the frame and mat were added afterwards. The first six dealt with the background, four of these were the entire image in colors of black, green and two brown. The other two were a solid turquois and a solid orange Illuminated at the bottom middle, both of these layers were used as Exclusion.

Next six dealt with the foreground... cut out the bird and trunk with Lasso and these three layers were brown, green and black. Then just the bird was cut out... a selection of the bird was filled with a gradient, another layer of the black color bird and finally just a merged gradient head on another layer.

Only two of all of these layers were in normal mode... it really was experimental and my first try at doing this... changing the modes and transparency until you get what you like and each layer depends on what is under and/or over. On this image I worked from the background up to the foreground.