Toothpick Painting - Fir Bonsai

At least I think it's a fir tree.
In this one I experimented with shadows and shades. For some reason I tend to have a very hard time with color; I'm not colorblind and in fact am very discerning when it comes to noticing subtle shades and tones. But I am terrible at: 1. mixing paint; and 2. putting decent color schemes together. Don't know why.

But I am totally digging how this one turned out. Total of about 18 hours, on another 6x8 piece of paper, and I wasn't able to count any dots.

Movies playing during painting: Minions, Rogue, Predator, Avalanche Sharks, Dig Two Graves, random indie flops, and Minions again.

Interesting side story: I had knee surgery on Friday (minor, no biggie) and I tried to paint on Saturday. Apparently I have a "different" reaction to hydrocodone in that my entire body feels like an electric current and I tremble like a chihuahua in the snow. So after about an hour, my eyes stopped focusing. Seriously. They wouldn't zoom in on anything smaller than type on a page. It freaked me out at first, but I quit taking those evil little pills and the next day I was back to normal.

Onward!

Before I started on the top, I decided to try out a new style of 'leaf.'

Once all the leaf-stars were in place I added lighter and darker shades in the background that really helped accentuate them.

And of course, no painting would be complete without a hideous mistake and attempted cover-up. This part of the base had too many black dots running together and it stood out like a sore thumb. So in my attempt to remedy the problem, of course I made a freaking mess. But I'm counting on the fact that the dots are so small, no one will notice. Except for all of you...

Thank you all so much for upvoting and resteeming! I'm really shy about showing my work and so having gotten good responses from Steemians (whose opinions carry more weight than anyone else's, duh) on my other paintings has seriously boosted my confidence. They're actually the only positive feedback I've ever received; usually I get nothing. So as a result, I am on a huge creative high and can't wait to start another bonsai! If anyone has any suggestions for something that might look awesome in dots, let me know! I love new challenges.

Thanks all!!