finding quotes

I thought the easiest way to start developing imagery for this project would be to read through the book and find some quotes to loosely work from. This book is good for descriptive quotes about the island the boys land on.  One quote I found to initially work from links in well with the leaf studies I've been working on:

'the ground beneath them was a bank covered with coarse grass, torn everywhere by the upheavals of fallen trees, scattered with decaying coconuts and palm saplings' 

Ive done a few sketched of grass and palm trees to start with, and tried mixing the ink drawings with cut outs which kind of works, but I think I prefer the whole thing in cut outs. 

I like how the leaves look almost 3D when layered on top of each other, I might try work using 3D cut outs and taking photos to create more of a sense of depth.