Narrative- Creating Trees for Backdrop- Matte Paintings

After speaking with Alan today about creating the background for the narrative animation, he suggested that when making the trees in the backdrop, I could make a matte painting in Photoshop and model around it in Maya. After that I could then project the same matte painting onto the model and it would create the texture for it. I'm currently modelling trees in Maya and finding it difficult as the trees are complex shapes, but I think it'll be worth it.