hii anon, thank you for being so poilte about your criticism, I appreciate it! ive had far less nicer anons in my inbox recently LOL. I did end up going back to look at the piece youre talking about, and I want to say I did only use a single picture as reference, from which I also colourpicked the skintone for Ella. You're very right, lighting is everything! in fact when I went to grab some more references, I came to realise that Ella looks completely different in each picture, I just ended up grabbing one where the light is brighter. heres a bit of a schematic I diyed :

as you can see, there's 100% pictures where her skin is darker than the reference I chose, but I didn't choose it based on lighting, I chose it for expression, which is what I was practicing with the piece. I tinkered with my piece a bit, because I don't think MUCH change is necessary, but at the same time, I think the background colour was definitely playing into it.

I hope to use this blog as an archive to demonstrate and to document my progress as an artist, storyteller, and hopefully a creator [the kind to make characters, not the general 'hope to find an audience to make money kind]

This feels awkward to do, considering I've never done things of this ilk before, but here's hoping it goes smoothly. Can't succeed if you don't try and all that jazz. To those who would stumble upon my domicile of a blog, welcome in, I'd offer you tea but that is quite difficult through a digital screen, and a website. Back on topic, I do hope you find what I make worth your while, and I hope that someone enjoys what I have created, even if it's a bit...messy.