Hi, this is a good study actually and your suspicions (value, edges, and color) actually aren’t the reason, you did great on all of them. I kept the edges painterly like in your original, I kept the colors the same, and the values are good too. The issue actually is that you did not separate your light and dark values correctly (not the literal values themselves, but how you arranged them). For example, in the re-paint I took all the light values in the jaw and replaced them with shadow values. The upper part of the skull were also way too light on the planes that should be facing downwards. Your edges and colors are good, but with your values I can tell in the original that you already can gauge value, it’s about organizing values correctly. If this is a reoccurring issue in your paintings, I actually think you’d benefit more from studying light logic and planes. So worry less about value scales, color studies, and edge control and more on - painting spheres and cubes in light - form and planes, asaro heads Marco bucci has great tutorials on those if that helps Great work