one think i’m noticing is that the figure feels very “airbrushed” for lack of a better word. especially at the edges and the outline of the character it just sort of bristles off. try making sure you have a hard edge — here’s what i mean
(it doesn’t really work as well because i zoomed in a lot but if you look at the work of any famous “semi realistic” painterly artist like ruan jia, huangjian guang, guweiz, wlop, etc you can see what i mean)
now, obviously you can have soft edges (there’s a marco bucci video talking about soft and hard edges), but you need to be very conscious of where you’re putting them and honestly you only really do that if you have a super heavy painterly style (in which case ur mimicking a canvas so it’s not really applicable here)
also, remember cast shadows will have a much more abrupt edge than the gradient one you incorporated. here’s an image from color and light by james gurney. if you haven’t read the book please do
