gristmill plein air reworked

Sometimes after letting a painting sit for a while, I will go back and see if I can improve on it.  Usually it doesn't take a month before I do this, but in the case of my Gristmill Plein Air painting, it has been longer than that.
It did not seem quite finished but I could not quite figure out what it needed.  I decided to post it onto a facebook paged where fellow artists critique your work.  Wow, talk about putting myself out there! There was lots of input as to how to improve it.  One of the comments was that the waterline cut the picture right in half, it looked like two different paintings put together, and there was no point of focus.
So I decided to just go for it, and try to apply some of the ideas that had been thrown out there.  I raised the waterline and broke it up with some grasses. I lightened the foreground a bit and darkened the background to try to create more depth in the painting. And I added a point of interest, the fisherman. I rarely put people in my plein aire paintings so this was a big challenge. He looks a little stiff but I think it works.

 

Before

After