11

Here's a close up of the top half of the tree, prety much completed to the extent it needs to be for this piece. The choice was made to keep the contrast within the tree fairly low as it's going to have to recede into the background. There will be a great amount of detail painted into the foreground later, and we can't have this competing with it. I keep a copy of the pencil available as I'm painting so I know where all the foreground elements are while they're covered with paint at this stage.