Stape attacks! 2

Above is the painting as it was submitted. Below is my bowdlerized version.

Most of the changes I made were in response to the problems I laid out last night. Here they are, with bullets.

• I lightened the sunlit areas up a little. Particularly the the sky.
• I turned the mystery area in the background into a row of hills, that brings your eye across the painting and to the little house.
• I passed the light behind the house, again to get more contrast and interest up into that which I am pushing as the "subject area". Now when you go back there you find something of interest the a lightest light and a darkest dark are gathered about my subject. That gives me a tonal climax there.
• I eliminated a lot of the trees and varied those that I kept some more. I made their trunks more varied and thickened the closest one up so it would look nearer. Now they are not lined up like soldiers, that was too static. I also varied the grasses at their feet and threw some grass the same color over on the left side of the road to tie the two sides of the road together better. This gives more unity to the foreground.
  
• I reworked the big shadow shape on the left making it more irregular, and a more interesting shape interlocking with the shape of the lights and no longer divided by a stripe down the middle. I pulled it across the road up by the house. That decreases the "acceleration" that was hauling you so relentlessly to to the distance. Now it takes you to the house and not past it.
• I have eliminated a lot of the repetitive stripes that pointed along the bottom of the trees, along the road etc. They were way too insistent and regular.
• I worked up the figure just a little, reducing the size of his head by perhaps 30 kilos.
• I turned that stump on the left into a tree that broke the horizon line over there. That improved the balance of the piece and explained the stump better.