Definitely agree that your highlighting could use more depth. I'll compare your model to the studio model to illustrate what I'm meaning:
DRESS: both you and the studio artist went with a deep red for the cloth, working up from black shadows. However you've kept the shadows relatively minimal, and jumped straight into that deep red for most of the area. The studio artist has kept a good 40-50% of the model in shadows, in order to create a stronger contrast.
Moreover, if you look closely you can see that the studio painter has several additional layers of highlighting on the dress that add a lot more depth. Ontop of the breasts, the stomach, the very upper edges of the folds of cloth, are all blended up to several shades lighter than your red.
The end result is that yours ends up looking slightly muddy, while the studio effort looks more vibrant, even though less of their model is actually *red*.
SKIN: the colours you've used are warmer, standard flesh tones. The result is skin that looks living, unlike the bloodless vampire look in the picture. They've used more greyish tones to create that "bloodless, pallid flesh" look.
HAIR: the trick to painting black hair isn't black...it's white. The trick is to highlight the hair with areas of "shine" to really make it pop. For example, take
http://s629.photobucket.com/user/asharimrai/media/minis/perdita4.jpg.html. Your brain tells you clearly that the hair is black, but much of what you *actually* see is white and grey. The "shine."
GENERAL: To just give some general tips, I think your biggest issue is that you're choosing highlight colours too close together. When highlighting your goal is to create a sense of depth, and when you choose colours a few tones apart you don't really get that effect. The trick is to instead choose highlights that are quire some distance apart to create an exaggerated contrast. Again, you can see this in the studio mini, how they've gone from an almost-black to an almost-white with highlights on the dress. The black banner is more grey than black. Etc.
EDIT: Saw an article on BOLS that was on-point for some of my advice. Check it out HERE. It's a step-by-step for free-handing, but the techniques are just as applicable to general painting. Namely how to build up highlights and contrast in order to create a desired effect, one step at a time.
erv:
