Tree Painting Progress

Since I was asked how I paint trees I thought I'd put this little thing together. It's not a tutorial really, just some stages I go through when I paint.

Couple things to point out, though:

1. I always make a new separate layer for my trees so I don't end up messing the background if I want to change something.
2. I also have blacks and whites on a separate layers as well as any textures I might use.
3. I use low opacity brush (around 18-40%) to paint the trees, bigger brush for general shape and smaller to add more detailed branches.
4. I try not to zoom in until I have general lights and shades in place - in this case during picture 7 was the first time when I took a closer look at my trees and started to add details. I like to paint branches loosely, so the basic shape is pretty much this: [link]

If you're interested in seeing more detailed process, I'd recommend you take a look at my LiveStream videos: [link] , [link] and [link] In those recordings I paint trees much like these depicted here.