Reworking a painting

Now that I've determined what I want to represent in my paintings, it's really easy to see how to fix older paintings. In this case, the painting was done a year ago, when I was first learning how to paint in oils.

The painting on the left (A) was done with my first Water-Soluble oil painting class. Although a number of people have mentioned that they like this painting, I've never really cared for it. The colors are too bright and the background trees are too flat. Also, the focal point (bright red tree to the right) just doesn't look like a tree. The only portion of this painting that I've liked was the foreground bush/land and the sky.

To make it more like my current style of massing the shapes and introducing various abstract shapes, I reworked the painting (B). There is a lot more of this painting that I'm extremely happy with. I like the darker massed shapes of the background tree/foliage. This provides a nice offset to the bright abstract shapes in the front. I also like the general shape of the bush. Rather than keep with the sky, I decided that it need more of a linear flow to match the rest of the painting.

Now that I have the basic shapes/layout done, the final part of the painting is to paint the bright red tree. In this case, I'll have to search my reference photos for a better tree. Something more interesting than the linear triangular shape of the tree in painting A.