Drawing #2 - Practice - Progress of a single picture

Hello fellow Steemians! I started drawing this picture 7/7/17 and finished it 7/10/17, and I wanted to share it with you all.

Final picture: 

This is what it looked like at first:

It was alright for a start. I sent it to my friend to see what he thought of it and he told me to add contrast by darkening the shading and cleaning up the lines. That's what I did:

It looked better and definitely had less of a "sketch" look it. I sent it back to him and he told me to add decal like tear marks and make the cloak a little dirty looking.

I decided to follow his advice, but also add an ear:

So, I had to look up what anime cat ears looked like because I never drew them before. I also had to look up how to draw ripped clothing which seemed difficult at first. I suppose though, it wasn't so bad. Again, I sent it back to my friend, and he suggested adding one color.

I added red to the eye:

She looks super evil now. I also had to look up how to draw evil eyes... Then he suggested inking the gas mask. This terrified me because I never used ink in any of my drawings!!! Never! If I made one mistake... it would all be over...

But, I followed his advice, and messed up the gas mask (I knew this would happen!!!):

He said it was okay since this is just practice (true true), but still! So, I inked the whole thing which was even harder. I looked up how to add shine to hair with ink and how to shade with ink... I had to figure out how to keep the aura around her and how to still make it look like she has braids. I couldn't just color in her braids entirely. I also had to figure out how to make her cloak look old. 

This is my final picture with a little more red added to it:

There are definitely things I need to improve on, but that's okay. It turned out better than I thought it would and I definitely learned a ton of new things in the process, like, how difficult it is to use ink in drawings. Kudos to you all who draw with ink all the time. If you have any drawing advice for me, please, do comment. Thanks for reading!