Those practices are really good.
Don't stress over the rendering if it doesn't turn out to be looking good, getting it to look good goes a long way.
If you want, try to experiment with the brush settings a bit and find a combination thats comfortable for you, like turning opacity to 100 without pressure sensitivity or manually adjusting the density.
Oh and:
Get a good understanding with values before jumping into colors.
If your values are good then you can do any color and it works.
If you values aren't working then it doesn't matter how good your colors are, it will look awful.
Values do the work and colors do the harmony ^^