Forgive me if I sounded overly harsh Werewolf. My post wasn't at all meant to be a sort of personal attack. What I said were only my opinions, however to me it seems as though you're making them out to be an opinion on your view of technique---which they aren't. My opinions concern the piece, not you, except for the fact that (1) they were the opposite of yours, and (2) I had a confusion about the similarities between this piece and your banner. (I originally didn't make the connection between the cloud shading and your banner, to me it's a normal way to deal with the 2 color per 8x8 hi-res rule.). To make my comments out as an "elitist rampage" is more than a bit of overkill. If you claim that I have "attacked lesser people" before, you would do well to give some examples, otherwise your claim is baseless. I am not trying to start a flame war, because I feel I don't know you well enough to be making personal attacks. I don't believe you know enough either, so please leave me out of this and let's focus on the art.
I made an edit to show a few points which I believe require attention:
-First of all, to show that the background works logistically, I've continued the mountain line twice: RED represents the mountain line continuing straight; GREEN continues the curve that the mountain seems to have. Both of them terminate themselves behind the prince, therefore there's no problem.
-In ORANGE I've circled all of the jaggy lines which could be smoothed out.
I agree that the grey kind of doesn't work. And I think a lot more detail could be put into this piece while still keeping restrictions.