That's a bit of a tough question to answer because it's pretty subjective. We're all human, so there will of course be some overlap, but I think it's better to firstly ask yourself what you find attractive, and then brainstorm ideas on how to get closer to those things. One thing I will say, though, is that with the exception of her eyebrows, her face isn't very expressive. As a result, I don't get a sense for how she feels about this situation. Perhaps this is why you feel it's "losing character", because she's not really expressing an emotion that we can relate to. If you look at Gil Elvgren's pinups, a lot of them are either expressing embarrassment in their face over their predicaments, or giving an alluring smile to the viewer so you know that they are purposefully trying to seduce you, or sometimes they are completely engrossed with other elements in the scene and reacting to that instead. Whatever the case, it always looks like they are thinking about something. Something Glenn Keane said once was that a big game changer for him was when he learned to animate what Tarzan was thinking, and not what he was doing. I think this is a great hint for all artists into how to make something feel more human, and maybe more "attractive" as a result.

In addition to what everyone else said about paper, I've had success with manually filling in the holes kinda like this(although, it's quite tedious): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epQhS1cHeCg One of the major artist pencil brands(I think Faber-Castell?) recommends going over your B grade pencils with and HB to fill in a lot of those holes too.

I've used Photoshop since I was 12, so it's hard for me to switch at this point, but I do break out PaintStorm Studio every once in awhile. It's kinda like a less buggy Corel Painter, although it's still in it's infancy, so it has some quirks of it's own.

Always exciting to see new artist centric communities popping up. Wishing you and your team success with the site :).