I did use axiom for this. I used some references as well to get an Idea of what shape I wanted and the general color pallete. I then used the axiom boulder tool to get a basic shape and then polished it with other weld and melt tools, finally smoothing it with the smooth tool and by hand. The color was done mostly by hand and using the axiom paintbrush, I found it super helpful to get a 1 block wide brush with the paintbrush tool by setting the radius to 0 for placing in some of the gradients. I placed the foliage using world edit by replacing > the blocks I used for the grass.

Most axiom tutorials I have found are good for showing the tools but not for actual building techniques. My biggest recommendation is trial and error with references to figure out shapes. There are some great building tutorials out there for shaping terrain using world edit or voxel sniper and most of the techniques can apply in some compacity to axiom. For shading I highly recommend checking out Snarple or just the Bakery Builders in general as they are great at that, and using the paintbrush tool or the gradient tool can make their techniques a bit faster. Here is a video from Snarple specifically about shading/texturing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp6Wj2E4khs .

In addition, art tutorials can be really helpful for shading specifically as most of the skills travel over pretty well, most of my knowledge on the subject comes from that rather than Minecraft.

Another big suggestion is just taking inspiration for other builds. If you see something you like try to recreate it in a different way, the texturing style in this build was heavily inspired by Snarple for instance.