I´m practicing new painting skills

I am following a online painting lesson with Tim Gagnon, and therefor I´m practicing new painting skills. It is quite frustrating. I accually don´t like learning, so I often find myself irritated and impatient.
This is an example of the lessons I am trying to learn:

It is much more difficult than it looks :-) True mastters of skills makes it look so easy!

Here is what I have for now:

I must practice the background much more, and the tree in the forground is a bit to animated. The grass is also too blended.

Tim Gagnon is hosting a contest :  Link

I still have a few days to practice before deciding if I can paint something good enough to participate with. There are soo many artist in the contest that are much better than me. That sucks, right? Someone is always better. The chinese says that it is better to always be number 2. That keeps you up on your toes :-)