I'm quite proud of the tile I've done, and upon completion and revealing of the finished collab, I'll finally have an avatar.

I'd try and pick up another but I'm headed out to Florida in 5 hours, and won't be back for a week.

Can't wait to see how far it'll have gone by then. Best of luck to all of you, I'm sure it's gonna be great.

And Tomec, wtf is up with that post. You showed tiles AND put them in the "Things to Avoid" template? I'm just hoping you did that to prove a point to avoid posting your tiles in the thread.

STILL, I like the work you did on those two, not bad.

I should've read the whole thread first  

Edit: Blah, changed tile and contents, much happier anyways 

Here's what I edited to try and show what I think the trunk might look like.

I sectioned it off into 4 pieces in and then filled in lines for the bark and knots.
Lastly I tried to illustrate my point of using purples and blues to shade, but I think I might have just messed up there 

As for the spots on the leaves, on some of them you used the main leaf color but darker, while some of them have just straight brown blotches.
I scanned the colors and it showed 57 different colors used, but I could only count about 20.

As Dusty said, the tree does seem more like it is blossoming the leaves instead of them being a part of branches.
If you're trying to make a tree that is more like a banana palm, here is a art piece done by Mary Jo Burgiel which I think may make a good reference:

I like the way the newer version is colored, I think it is more vibrant and stands out more... but at the same time if you're trying to bring the tree to life, why have the red and brown leaves which symbolize wilting?
I think the trunk needs to be redone (I'll try and edit it to show what I mean,) because the sheer amount of bumps and lines makes it seem more like a group of vines that are growing together.
You might also want to remember that for shading there are sometimes tints and shades of purples on the underside of the tree to accentuate the shading while still having color instead of being dull.


You can see what I mean from the bottom left example you posted. The light source is from the upper left, so the purple shading is on the lower right

One last thing, is there a specific light source for the tree? Because it seems that it might just be from straight up, which means the trunk shouldn't have as many highlights as it does.

All in all, I think it'd work great as an artistic piece as-is, but may need some refining otherwise.