Before and After, Bobolink Trail Head

Here is an older (re: 2008) plein air piece. The original was painted on an overcast gray and rainy October day at Bobolink trail head in Boulder. I tend to add more color instead of concentrating on the value. I felt that I did not give a good sense of distance in this piece.
I updated it in the middle version not long after I painted the original. The field is reading better but i felt I had lost the unity of the tree in the center and the field vegetation is still a bit chaotic.
This past week I did minor touch ups to clarify the scene. I carved out more sky in the group of yellow cottonwoods in the upper left and made them read as a unit; same with the color of the main tree clump, and the field. The field needed more flat spots of green grass and a pattern to the other vegetation. Even though most of the brighter golden yellows were lost, they show through in spots that are not that evident in the photo and I believe it reads better as a whole.