@Giselle One of the things you could focus on is the illusion of depth and focal point. For example in the piece with the caravan, the background could be more blurred as to put the caravan as the central focus, it would also create contrast between softer and harder edges. Adding atmospheric fog in the background would also heighten the illusion of depth and distance and would contribute to making the 2d space feel larger. Apart from that, you could try looking at how colors work within shadows as they aren't just a darker version of the local color. I suggest Marco Bucci's "Understanding Shadow Colors" video. Best of luck!

@Giselle great set of digital paintings. These have very good appeal. I particularly like the exciting use of colors. Richard Schmid’s book Alla Prima II has great chapter on self diagnosing one’s own paintings. While his perspective and book is entirely about traditional oil painting, the process of critical thinking applies to any artwork. At highest level, its all about examining work carefully as you progress for accuracy in achieving your desired vision and choices for each of the following- shapes, value, color and edges. Perhaps you look at work and ask what is an edge that looks off to you, could it be that hard edge was used and soft edge is needed, then experiment would that change make it better? Ask have you reserved your areas of greatest contrast in edge, value or color for your desired focal point of attention? Generally speaking in this group i see lots of hard edges. Also, the oranges painting while very cool looking stylewise, does flatten a bit in bowl and and oranges themselves because there are not the super smooth soft gradations in value typical of rounded spherical objects in real life. That’s a style choice to consider. Also, on a side note, consider inventing/ designing or even omitting cast shadows when they contradict the shape of object underneath, like when a straight cast shadow falls on orange it will tend to break illusion of roundness of orange form. I hope that helps.

Wanted to play around with more textured brushes. I think the dress turned out okay, I ended up simplifying some of the folds and shapes and I've been getting a better idea of how certain brushes change the way something looks. Really ran out of steam on the face though, even after a break. I like the look of very textured paintings but when I treated her face like I did the dress it looked really weird. Bad weird. But it was good practice. I definitely need to work with basic values more, I had to turn the reference b/w because I was confusing myself a bit.

Made three different brushes today and tried to play with their different effects. I understand a bit more now about how the different properties affect the brush's look. Not sure yet what they might be useful for, if it all, but they make funky textures.

Been playing around with the brushes in the brush pack. Trying to break the habit of using one brush for everything

I think you captured the likeness really well! What stands out to me is that the values are a bit on the lighter side so you lose contrast. Your darkest dark looks right, but the lighter shadows on the left side of the face aren't deep enough. In the reference, that side is a lot darker and shadows are a bit more defined with some noticeable hard edges. Maybe another pass at defining the shadow shapes and deepening the values?

Practicing with the different "glasses". The creaturizing tip really helps with seeing abstract shapes in the negative space!