"Bloom" Paint sketches

Hi peeps!

Sorry for my lack of activity lately, I am having a bit of a crisis of confidence, which is not unusual and somewhat to be expected after going a while without painting, but is really coming in the way, haha. 

I'm also catching up on Process PDFs/videos, and Tiny Tutorials, which take a while to put together, especially since I am doing those alongside Youtube videos, and my computer and editing software are NOT getting along AT ALL at the moment, and I'm tearing my hair out. 

I took a break from editing today as I was going slowly insane, and did a couple of quick colour studies for the painting I talked about and showed you the sketch of a few days ago. 

I started of with a pretty standard colour scheme on the left, but quickly realised I wasn't interested in using standard skin colours. In fact, it is something I am less and less interested in doing for anything other than studies, and I want to explore more avenues with more muted or otherworldly skin tones.
Which led me to try the colour scheme on the right, which I am much more pleased with.
These colour sketches are small, a lot smaller than the final piece will be, so I am not going into detail with anything. I am trying to get a better idea of my value distribution and colour theme as a whole. 

The snake will be translucent, and the flower will probably be pure white with some pink at the base, heavily inspired by magnolia flowers. I want the flower to be the center of attention. 

As you can see, I also experimented with having an outline, and I might stick with it in the final piece, depending on how I feel. I like outlines, but I need to find a way to make them less stiff. They feel too smooth to me right now, I want them a little more sketch-like. I also need to figure out what colours to use for outlines. 

So this is where I am at for now!
This month is getting away from me so fast, and it is causing me a lot of anxiety, as I was really hoping to have more time to paint and draw, but we've had so much to do, so many family events, so much admin to catch up on, that days fly by.
Oh well. We do what we can. 

At least today is sunny. So I'm going to go draw in the sun for a bit. 

See you soon lovely people,
Take care,
M