A tree with character

UPDATE:

Finally managed to finish my tree concept. I had several attempts at putting it into a scene but I decided that the angle and style of which I painted the tree, served better on its own as a standalone model concept.

This week we had to produce a tree which had character, and not a tree that IS a character. Avoiding faces, and human forms I attempted to create an interesting tree.

I began with some quick sketches to see what interested me:

After deciding on a composition I liked I put together a mood board:

I was able to produce the following image within roughly an hour:

Although I achieved some things with the above image, I wasn't happy that the tree had enough character, so back to the mood board I put together more "Big" trees:

I gave it a go painting a tree like the concept piece in my mood board, though still struggling to get form I went back to the sketchbook to practice drawing trees:

The following images are taken from my sketchbook where I did some studies on tree forms, values, and how they grow (apologies for the mobile phone photos):

At time of writing I am halfway through producing a final tree. So far I am really happy with the form. It's definitely more interesting, and it also seems to be holding some perspective which helps show size: