Dark Timber Painting Round 2

I scrapped everything except for the foreground trees and started over.  I think it's much better but I still have a lot to learn about painting!  This took me about two hours this morning.  I need to get faster, too!

If you're curious, here is a work-in-progress version that I saved:

I tried to block in bigger chunks of color first and work down into smaller details.  I think it helped quite a bit.  Then, once the pieces were in place, I could see where I needed to take color / brightness up or down.

Here's a black and white version...I tried to drop the painting into grayscale from time to time to make sure it was still reading.