Vera, the Truth Altern Art

I wanted some better alternative art for my fake Magic the Gathering card, Vera, the Truth, so... several hours later here is this. I haven't gotten a lot of practice in lately when it comes to drawing or photoshop, so I've been trying out some new stuff and brushing up on the old.

I've been starting out doing the whole thing in greyscale then adding color via a layer mask. Its vastly improving my shading quality, but now I'm falling down in color management. Everything seems just as washed out and bleh as usual. I would love tips from fellow photoshop users in was to improve on this technique

By the way, whats going on in the pic?
The card reads as:

Vera, the Truth [1 W/B W/B]
Legendary Creature-Salamander Wizard
Haste, Shroud (Cause lizards are all zippy and hard to target, bleh)
[1U],T: Draw a card.
[1W]:Remove Vera, the Truth from the game then return it to play under it's owner's control.
1/3

So in the picture, she's moments before had a revelation of some kind resulting in (you) drawing a card. Not a moment later, somehow someone targeted her with a lightning bolt, but not before she resourcefully blinked her self out of harms way with a spell, still visible in her hand.
Vera is standing on one of the many networks of bridges and pathways between the towering monoliths in my fictional world of Dagan.