Kota and Leanne's Pack

Lol, if I thought last year's picture was late, uploaded on December 13th, then I don't even know what to say about this one.

So! If you've been around with me for a while, you'll know this is the fourth in a series of "pack pictures" that was started in 2007. The first was just for fun, and the other's I've done to gauge my improvement from year to year.

This one has the least amount of wolves in it by far (8 compared to the most, which was 13), the first without pups, the first one on watercolor paper, the first with a background (sketched though it may be at this moment), and in my opinion, was the hardest to draw. I think going primarily digital has finally caught up with me and is what made this extra difficult for me this year. Cramming 8+ plus wolves on a single piece of paper has never been easy, but I think I've gotten too used to resizing, moving, and skewing things without a second thought if something's not fitting right.
Also, this isn't the whole pack. There are about...5 others, but all (with the exception of Cahir, the beta) are unimportant and are just nameless faces.

The first full-scale drawing of this (the only pre-sketch I did was a tiny, tiny thing in my math notes) failed completely. I drew Kota and Leanne too large and too much in the center of the paper to fit anyone else in. So I started over, drawing Night Fang first. I've always always always started these with the alphas first and in the center, but Kota and Leanne were drawn last in this one. After I'd drawn Bacar, Veera, and Fainted, there was no way I could draw them like the alphas in the past without them being pretty much completely obscured by everyone else. Insert background. Of course, after they were drawn where they are, I had to draw something to the left or risk going crazy by having too much going on on the right. xD
That tree behind Kalasin is still driving me crazy, by the way. Does anyone have any tips/advice on making it look...better?
Having said all that, the background in this will be colored and painted eventually. I don't know when it'll be done. Could be January, could be next December. I might want to do a few more large scale watercolor paintings to figure it all out before I murder this due to lack of knowledge/experience, lol. When it is done, though, I'll be sure to update this and let you all know.

Names and faces time!
To the left, Kalasin sits behind Alyra, who's laying on the ground and looking up at Night Fang as he's telling them something. To the right of them, Bacar glowers and glares (lol, looks more like he's pouting ) at the alphas, Veera sits next to him, and Fainted walks behind them with a big grin on his face. In the back, Leanne (grey) lays next to her mate, Kota.

Wall of text is a wall of text! You get a if you read it all. :3

Tools used:
Prismacolor and Kimberly watercolor pencils
Micron sepia pen size 01
White gel pen
Canson watercolor paper

Fainted (c) Only-Dark-Memories
All other characters and art (c) Phoenix67
You'd better not steal this. >:[