This is madness (incarnate)!!

Howdy y'all. My illustration teacher this year has been giving crazy deadlines that are definitely helping me work faster. We took reference photos of each other during class and the homework for the next day was to make something cool out of the ref. So my buddy became a Cthulhu idol. I'm pretty happy that I managed to pump this out in 6 hours the night before it was do, but it definitely still has a lot that it needs done to it so any crits would be great.

Help me Tasty Paint Kenobi, you're my only hope...

Hey Ya'll, roll by my blog, I'm imploring the public at large to crit my coloring because I feel so deprived from the opinions of others, seriously, I miss crits so much, don't know what you got 'till it's gone I guess. Anyway, I know I don't know a whole lot of you but your opinions are still important to me and if you have a free minute set it aside to rip me a new one because I'm pretty uncertain about where to go with these.
THEEEEEEEEEEEEANKS
-J

Cuz I wanna be a cow-boy bay-beeeee!!!!!

Alright so im probably gonna do a little bit more for the space mechanic piece. Mainly just adding more dirt and such, but for now i needed a break from it and decided to completely revamp a piece people are kind of lukewarm about. So far here is what i got...

I added some more space on the right to give his gaze some breathing room, and worked out the details from his waist up and lightened everything so it can be seen better. The biggest thing so far is the rework of the horse who's just blocked in so far but is a far better representation of a horse then the siamese cat horse in the old version.

The story is that this guy just rode up to this house or barn that is burning which will be the source of the warm light. We cant see the house because its off the frame to the right so i need to add things to show that this is the front yard of some sort of structure that is in fact on fire. Don't know how exactly im going to do that without killing the composition. Im thinking i might also add his trusty dog who is reacting to the fire (probably barking) just to the right of the horse looking in the same direction as the guy.

Anyway, as much as I like the fact that I'm improving my pieces, i really wish i was better last year when i made them so i didn't have to do this. I feel like one year shouldn't have made this much of a difference in ability. If you guys have any input about anything that can help, let me know. I'd love to hear it.