For the blending exercises you don't want to rely on the smudge to blend your colors, it's just meant to smooth the edges once you get the colors down. Also, instead of moving horizontally go in the direction of the colors. If the area they meet at creates a vertical line then smudge vertically.
For these exercises I painted solid colors over until they met, eye dropped the color in the middle, and then painted the new color right in the middle. Then I kept getting the middle value and laid it down.
Hope this helps!
I love your line work by the way!

Definitely agree with you Beme, I will try practice it more and go vertically.

It is a very different workflow for sure but thank you again for taking the time to explain to me how to do it.

Thank you kindly btw :stuck_out_tongue: