Imaginary Desert Landscape: Round 2

Dear reader,
I recently decided I needed to do something about the composition in my artwork.  I decided that my composition skills are holding me back from making better artwork.  So, I gritted my brains and decided to grab composition by the scruff and shake it.  The results we're (long pause) not what I had hoped.  Instead of improving my painting I seem to have tensed up my creative muscles and made something choppy and garish.

Just having resolve to do something better doesn't always mean the results will really turn out better. I think I may have to revise my ideas about how to work on composition in my paintings.  I think I have to go about it with a softer touch and use some of my intuition that I've built up from creating paintings over the years.

Here is some of my current process in creating imaginary desert landscapes:

This is my first attempt at an imaginary desert landscape before I decided I needed to work on my composition.  I'm in the process of revising this one.  The mountains on the left are too dark and draw too much attention.  The dirt and shrubs at the bottom are too light.  They look too minty.

Here's my "grit my brains" painting.  It's obviously worse than my first attempt. The colors look garish.  The red mountains in the foreground are awful. The composition looks terrible. 

So I decided to sketch out a new idea.  This sketch reminds my of some of my older paintings with the way I drew the sky.  The rocks remind me of how rocks are painted in Chinese paintings. The sketch is to work on an idea so I'm not concerned about whether I like everything about it. 

Today I started this painting.  it was going to be based on the sketch but it only partially references the sketch I made. This one is changing as it is being painted.  The end result may be similar to this or it might be quite different.