seeing a lot of tree attempts lately so i thought that i would go through one and hopefully some others might find it useful. fair warning its not my favorite tree but it doesnt like being called names so ill leave it at that.
just blocking out here - getting the shape of the tree. Ive got some basic globular highlights to rough out the tree's general volume, and define how i want to lay out the leaf clusters.
roughing in some highlights - trying to shape out how my tree leaf structure will fall on the general areas of higlight i hit previous to this. if i were to be presenting a proper step by step this step would have been a bit more cleaned up.
adding some more structure and highlights to the leaves. ive chosen to go with globular leaves but you could use other patterns as you refine as well, depending on what type of tree you might want to end up with (consider certain trees have certain shapes as well). Im trying to get certain groups of leaves to project outward in a way that will be consistent with the tree's general form and the viewing perspective that is desired.
going through and really refining leaf structure, trying to be careful not to individualize everything, but still make certain groups pop to give the tree a sense of roundness. I also introduce a few values in the leaves that are more yellowish than green that have luminosity quite similar to other darker green values already present in the leaves. This breaks up an overwhelming uniformity of green values found throughout the tree, in my opinion making it feel a bit more organic. There are a few leaf structure choices here that got away from me a bit, and felt that some of the earlier versions had a better feeling to them. So let that be a lesson not to overwork your leaf structures!
