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This is a basic overview of how I generally work. I use Painter X and a tablet to create my art. I will use my fairy horse piece as an example :)

I start off with a medium-toned background. This is because I find it easier to make better tonal choices on a mid-coloured background as opposed to a stark white canvas. I choose a sort of peachy brown, and then start sketching in a shade darker than the canvas colour.

I start sketching with the Grainy Water tool. This stage takes the longest - the drawing part is absolutely critical, in terms of proportion, and it has to look "right". I am referring to a "horse and pony" book that I own, which has great diagrams of a horse's muscular anatomy and skeleton. There are also many close-ups of hooves, ears and horse faces to give me a better understanding of horses. Reference is your friend! How are you going to paint something if you don't really know what it looks like in the first place?
Refining the sketch some more, with the grainy water tool. I sharpen the finer areas such as the face and hooves with the tapered conte tool. At this stage, I indicate the wings vaguely. When sketching, I flip the canvas horizontally every so often - this trick really makes any disproportioned or "wrong" areas stick out like a sore thumb. Your eye can get accustomed to the piece you are working on, so the flipping trick helps to give a fresh perspective.
I now make another new layer underneath the sketch. This layer is set to normal. Then I set the sketch layer to multiply, and add colours underneath. I use the Grainy Water tool to splurge out some large areas of colour, and play around a bit to create something that looks pretty :P
I flatten down the entire image. I then mask off the horse's body, and then copy and paste the body onto a new layer, over the sketch. I then blur this new horse body layer, and set the layer mode to "screen". This fleshes out the body nicely, and I play around with the brightness/contrast/colour of the layer to make it look like a white body. I erase around the nose and hooves to make a colour-point colour scheme for the horse. Then I flatten the image. Next, I paint in the sky with blue Tapered Conte and Oil Pastel. I do the same for the clouds, and also use one of my custom brushes to add some texture to the clouds. The horse's eye, ear and hooves are detailed with the Loaded Palette knife tool.
The horse was looking a little monotone, so I make a new layer on top of everything and set it to "Overlay." I then add areas of purple, blue, yellow and green to the body using the Loaded Palette Knife tool. This is very very subtle, just enough to liven up the whiteness of the body. I detail the clouds some more with the Loaded Palette Knife, Tapered Conte and Grainy Water tools.
Finally, I add the hair and wings on top of everything else, mostly using the Loaded Palette Knife tool.
Finished! Thanks for looking!