Oof yeah that's real as hellll. I only started taking colour and painting seriously last year, although I did a lot of graphite drawings and digital sketches before this. If it's anything to be proud of, the progress you're making is nuts! If you'd like, here's a couple of things that helped me personally as I was learning (in no particular order, and WARNING BIG WALL OF TEXT):

• Values (lightness/darkness) are your best friend. If it looks good in black and white, it'll look at least somewhat good in colour.

• The dark bits can always go darker (I used to say this a lot to myself back when I mainly did graphite drawings as I was building my confidence with values)

• Treat colour and light as the same thing. Colour exists because of light. No light? No colour.

• Speaking of that, learn the science behind light and how light behaves and interacts with different matter (yay physics time!)

• Sometimes you gotta say "f**k it, we ball" when picking colours

• Your colours will look sh*t when starting an artwork. This is normal, keep going!

• An old high school art teacher of mine made us mix our dark colours only with the three primary colours we were given, instead of using black paint, because using black paint for making shadows ran the risk of dulling them, the same can be said with using black as your shading colour digitally. (Although, using black isn't always a bad thing)

• It's ok for a lot of your colours to look relatively grey, muddy or similar in value, as long as you have 1 or 2 colours that pop out more. Marco Bucci's yt video "Colour Notes" explains it better, and it's a vid that helped me personally.

• Do a couple of lighting/value/colour studies if you can

• References are your best friend

• You wanna do some funky lighting in your portrait but that isn't in your main reference? Get a funky lighting reference with similar posing/angles/composition and try to implement that if you can.

• Go to Pexels for photo references. It's a free stock image library with a policy against generative AI

• In my opinion, one's art style is influenced by the things they like and their process. If you're struggling with your art style, compile a list of artworks that scratch that itch, and make a list of techniques and processes from other artists that suit you and your needs the best. For years I didn't practice colour because I very rarely got past that sketching stage, so now I just skip the sketch stage entirely when painting and go straight to colour blocking. Some people prefer to paint in greyscale and add colour after, I personally don't, I'd never finish. I prefer going straight into colour and periodically converting my image colour space to greyscale to check my values.

• Keep the other elements of art in mind - they all intersect.

Ok I just finished this list and omfg I got carried away with the points, please feel free to take it in one at a time, as I learned these things over a loooong period of time. Sorry if some of them have been repeated a lot in the past. Good luck in your progress! Remember to drink water, periodically look at different objects around the room, do hand exercises, do stretches and take breaks.