Re-working this oil painting of Coma Berenices

I've had this oil painting completed a couple years ago but re-working it now entirely changing the composition. 

It illustrates Coma Berenices which is one of the  constellation stars. For those who aren't familiar, Berenice was a mythology figure, a princess I think who sacrificed her beautiful long hair and cut it off giving it to Aphrodite in exchange for her husband's safe return from the war. Aphrodite then turned her hair into stars which became Coma Berenices in the Constellations located above and supported by Leo and Virgo. 

Initially the composition here (scroll down to the bottom to see the full image) depicts Berenice as one of those mythology figure busts on top of pedestal depicting Leo and Virgo. The dove and rose pedals symbolize Aphrodite, then on the right lower corner is a mastercopy sketch of "Coma Berenices", a painting done by 19th century master Luis Falero. Kind of wanted to make it seem as if that is Falero sketching out the comp for his painting looking at the bust as reference. Then there are stars in the sky showing constellations including coma berenices. On the left there was a column with carvings depicting the War.

So I started feeling all that are a bit too much and decided to paint over the whole background with a light tone. Hurts a little to paint over and destroy hard work I've put into the background , but I look at it as practice and not so much about the end product. 

Of course it isaves a lot of time to work out a small comp first before making the large painting but for me, that's not the best way since I paint only from life and into direct painting approaches. My models are not professional models who comes in as scheduled for pay, but volunteers whereby  I need to rely my painting process on their availability. So when I luckily happen to have a model available posing first sitting, i usually paint in only the head first at a random spot on the canvas without having any idea what the composition will be. Then work on the composition by ear as I move along. If they come back I'd proceed to paint in the body, if not come up with other ideas that doesn't need the body etc. It's a very impromptu process.