cows and chickens preparing for the farm games

The color for Colour Collective this week was Baker-Miller Pink (the color of the cow noses below). I wasn't sure what to draw, but then remembered a sketch I did a long time ago of a chicken running over the top of a line of cows. It was for a title page of a picture book that sadly never got published, but I've always liked that sketch.

I added a second line of cows, a bunch of baby chickens, had fun with the colors, and came up with this:

Today, I found out that the prompt for Illustration Friday this week is team. I decided that the cows and chickens are teams getting ready for the upcoming Farm Games (which I imagine are like the Olympics for farm animals). Team Moo is preparing by eating a hearty meal. Team Cluck is preparing by running sprints (the baby chicks are still a little unclear about what that means). I decided that in order to concentrate, Team Moo and Team Cluck would have to have no distractions in their image, so away went the background and the image now looks like this:

It looks the same, and yet completely different! I like looking at art with different aspects added or subtracted to see what it looks like and how it changes the image as a whole. Speaking of completely different, here's a version without the black line:

Here's all three of them together, which makes a completely different look, with the white square in between the two multicolored squares (which makes it easier to see that the cow lines are not straight):

Not sure which one I like best. As usual, I like them all for different reasons. If this were for a book project, the one that worked best with the characters and story would be the one to go with for printing (still not always easy to choose).

Do you ever do multiple versions of images or written stories? If so, how do you decide which one you like best, or which one makes it to final art/text?