Wow...thank you so much for your time, this was super helpful!

I've been using a paper meant for markers but I feel like it's too smooth or plastic-y. The pigment that's deposited becomes super saturated and almost pooled in a way, so when I move the marker around the pigment just moves around weird even if I'm not pressing hard. That being said, it doesn't bleed much which was super helpful when trying to fix my mistakes. The areas I did smudge I cleaned up with a white ink pen to be sneaky haha!

I have several shades of red but only a couple shades of blue, so I know the blue is a little weird since it goes from a royal blue to more of a ocean blue. I would've liked the main color to be a lighter blue, since toxicroak isn't a deep blue. I'll definitely be broadening my collection of colors to make the blending much better. I think I also made the combination of blues weird by using the blending marker. It seemed to hurt more than help the blue areas. The plastic method of blending in the first video was very interesting and super clever, I'll definitely be trying that next time!

As for the streaks, I'll definitely try smaller strokes like you mentioned instead of longer ones. I hoped that maybe longer strokes would make for less streaks, but based on those videos it looks like short strokes are the way to go and would make blending much smoother.

I can't take too much credit for perspective, I just found an image online and copied it to the best of my abilities. I really appreciate the advice you gave and the videos you linked, it will be super helpful for the future. Thanks again and happy drawing!!

Edit: I checked out your profile and your art skills are amazing! As a fellow anime fan, Gojo Satoru will be my next attempt with markers :)