You're right about it looking a bit flat, which comes from not having a wide enough value range I think. Try making your darks darker and light lighter to get a fuller range of values to work with and express your 3d forms. I feel like the arms also get a little bit lost in the snow in the background due to how close they are to each other in value so may be play with their positioning or value so they stand out a bit more? I think you could also benefit from making the hand in from a bit better defined, as right now it feels kind of flat and theres not very good indication of the positions/bends of the fingers. Something to consider conceptually, maybe make her hair flow a little more to reflect the wind of the snow storm? Tbh I like the desaturation you have going on here though, I feel like it reflects the mood of the piece well overall and matches a snowstorm kind of draining the color from everything.

hey there, i did a quick paintover below .nice job on the painting, i really like the mood it conveys. i think there are some issues with the structure of the face though. since idk what photo you used, i came up with my own lighting instead so apologies if it's not exactly what you were going for for some reasons the highlights on the cheeks got "cut off" (?) the cheek area is also quite dark, i think that area still in light so try not to use shadow values there. also for the colors, i recommend shifting hues when changing values ( unless you're using monochromatic palette ), adding colors variations will help make your painting feels more alive. i made the highlights more blue-ish in my paintover. ( though i made the highlights a bit too dark in my paintover, you can go brighter if you want to ) also for looseness, imo i don't think "looseness" = "messiness" ( unintentional messiness ). in your painting, the hair is quite messy ( unintentionally ), the brushstrokes are repetitive, which does more harm than good. try to keep in mind the fundamentals when painting hair, like form, shape designs, etc. you don't have to render out every lock specifically though. there is other stuff like how black people have different skull structures to white people so their face structure would be different but im not gonna touch on that for now, you can research more on that if you want to though the paintover is not the best, i hope its somewhat useful

Looks great and reads really nicely as a thumbnail. Your colors and values are great, but I think you need to pay some attention to your edges, specifically in the face. To start just think "where are my cast shadows falling, and where are my forms turning?" and work from there. Excellent stuff!

My first impression was wow, cool! I think once you look at the image more closely, because of the huge contrast of black and white in the ear and blockiness of the application, the attention is drawn there (for me) which is not the best part of the image as it looks a bit unfinished, so maybe soften that area. Amazing shapes/proportions/colours though, I love it!

I think you could still use some work on establishing the planes of the head and conveying them through your work. The nose in particular is missing some critical value changes to establish its bottom plane, and instead its shape is mostly being expressed through the positioning of the nostrils. So I'd just say go over the planes of the face a bit more and try and be a bit more confident with your shading. That said this is still a very good start overall! great work :)