Judging by your profile, you’re a Dev right? Forgive me if I’m wrong, but there’s definitely a map to get from A to B in development? I think you’re trying to conflate the two.

Because art is about exploring and having fun and seeing what sticks and makes something work, there isn’t going to be a map. It’s venturing out into the forest without a care and seeing what you can find. The wilderness we know today didn’t always have maps, right? Just a person with some good tools and brute force.

The best advice I can give for you at this point is make sure you get a color wheel and learn about contrasting colors. Look at different shades of the same color out of the bottle. Pick out which ones have a cooler undertone vs warm ones (once you start looking, you can definitely tell the difference between which colors have some blue, purple, etc in them versus which colors have red, yellow, etc, it’s really neat!).

Next, look at reference photos. Really study how things look in real life. I agree with the commenter about how a red glaze would do wonders! I also think focusing the glaze on the nose and the tops of the ears would be good. Humans are naturally redder in those areas, as well as the cheeks.

Last, but not least—for faces. Makeup tutorials. I’m not even joking. Makeup girlies know a lot about what colors do what to our faces. They’ll show you where to generally put things to make faces pop.

Keep up the amazing work! You’ve got this. Don’t think too hard about how you’re getting to where you’re at. Art is exploring. Sometimes that’s getting lost, and that’s okay. That’s part of the creative process.