Tree practice

[borichan]

Hi everyone,



I have tried my best to make realistic looking tree. Tell me what you think.

[Ashbad]

I think it looks nice!  There are two critiques I think I'm capable of giving on this one, though:

- Color.  I think the brightest two colors are too far away in luminosity from the darker two, so I made an edit where I bring them closer together, for a more natural feel:



- Visibility in gradients of shading.  It looks almost as if there are distinct layers of where the leaves are shaded and where they are not.  I did a quick, rough edit where I tried to bring these layers together more:



Basically, I dither in some of the darker shades along the way towards the lighter colors, and then blend those lighter colors into the darker outline that surrounds the leaves as I moves up as well.  It's not perfect, there are quite a few pixels here and there that could be made darker/lighter to better the effect I was aiming for, but I'll leave that up to someone who can do it better here

Something about the trunk doesn't seem right, but I'm not quite sure how to fix that, either.  I'll give it up to one of the more experienced artists here to give advice on that.

[borichan]

Thanks for your reply.  
I see that my contrast is a bit high. I think the first edit looks the most what I wanted to achieve. The second one seems more flat to me and I want a dynamic sort of look where you can see where the light is coming from. Still your tips were really helpful in determining what do I want with this piece. I will have them on my mind when working on my next tree.