I love photography and when I'm not at the PC to work I usually go outside for a ride catching photos of nature. I think it's also very important in this work because help you to understand lights and atmosphere. For this illustration I used three different brushes for all the elements (one, a little textured, to make the first and second step, an hard one to paint over and make details in the third and fourth step and a third textured one to make cortex). In the final step I employed the basic PSD soft brush and some filters.