just a few years old but i'm struggling to get it to look right

two areas of advice- the foliage pad looks contrived and unnatural - i'm thinking of training the first branch back over the trunk [attachment=3]
second; the base of the truck is quite thin, is sort of works, i do see a lot of these trees about in nature with not much taper, - is there anyway of getting sacrificial branches to grow on these?
any other advice would be welcome
cheers