really need some Critique and possible paintover

[Tul]

Heya, I really need some advice on this one. I'm giving it as a gift to my girlfriend, who really likes Khaleesi from Asoiaf series. I don't really know what i'm doing wrong here but I still don't like how it looks at present. Any ideeas / pointers ? A paintover would be much apreciate.

I'm happy with the girl and the fur coat thing (both done from a picture ref, so I won't change much there), but the background and the dragon i'm not really sure what to do.

[Nimao]

the fur looks great ;O

i maybe would make the background
darker behind the lighter side of the face and the lighter side of the fur

[Ursula Dorada]

Hey there Tul!

So!
Quick cheap paintover - is it REALLY cheap, I didnt really work shadows or anything, just roughly blocked in to make a point:


Okay, here are my suggestions:

-James Gurney say in his book that it is usually too must saturation that breaks images, not too less; You can drop the saturation here by a fair amount and it will work much better.
-Avoid using neutral grays - specially this way, this much. Neutral grays are very digital, they tend to flat the piece a lot! I'd recommend only using them if you really know what you're doing. So play with the warm/cool grays here, but avoid that neutral background. Make it a cool one!
-The shape of her head is off; I made a quick transform on photoshop, but it would be much nice to rework the whole structure, specially the back of her head.
-I know you like the fur - but it is looking like a applied photo texture. It's not really working atm. If you really want to keep, you will need to work all the light and shadows to make it sit down with the rest of the painting - it feels it's not being lit by the same lights we have on the rest of the piece.
-I have also added a bit more of dramatic lightning, but this is personal taste :) It does make the light seems a bit warmer. You also have to be careful - if the red light from fire is coming from behind her, how come the front of her shoulder is lit by it? If the fire is coming from a place next where the viewer is standing, the light setup would be reading all differently. I think the easiest solution is just push that light behind her, I get rid of all the warm influence from the front.

Hope this helps!

[holdkocos]

with Ursula's lighting it would be ok i think, the only thing i would change is the composition...i mean...i would let more space that she could stare at so i push the figure to the left...:>
but naturally it's Your choice!