Work: Wood between the Worlds render

I’ve finally started designing the Wood between the Worlds... only slightly behind schedule. I started by sketching the design out then running it through Photoshop. It proved very difficult to render and I got quite frustrated with it, and almost gave in to despair! But then I tried a different rendering style using a little bit of photo collage to create a different look, resulting in this...

It’s not really what I want but as an image I think it looks quite nice and dynamic so I’ve kept it as some development work. Now I have to try and render it how I want it to look...however that may be.