Hi @Crystal (she/her) Blue, I think both James Doane and Levi make excellent points. When it comes to making a full blown painting, here are a list of the 'sub categories' that you need to have locked down in order to make your piece successful. Good composition: Good abstract design with a strong value read. The elements within your composition should create a clear focal area. Drawing: - this includes solid perspective, solid proportions in your characters, and a clear understand of form turning in space Light on form Color: making sure your color palette harmonizes well together. Additionally, this includes balancing your warm and cool colors. Edges: varying your hard and soft edges to turn form and to create focus in an image. Basically by trying to tackle a full on acrylic illustration such as this, you're juggling 20 different things. If you aren't experienced with each of the subcategories of painting, then juggling all of these concepts is going to be a frustrating experience. Just like James and Levi mentioned, starting out with something simple like painting spheres and cubes would be super helpful, but it mostly helps to familiarize yourself with the medium. I personally think that if you tackled each sub category on their own (and started by learning really solid drawing fundamentals first) then your paintings will only get stronger from here on out. The proko site and YouTube channel have a bunch of free resources on drawing fundamentals, and if you need any help then you can call on any of us in the forums to guide and encourage you. Hope this helps, and feel free to let me know if I can clarify anything for you.

While I can't really give you advice on using acrylics as I haven't really used them. I thought I would share one piece of advice for learning that I think can be helpful. It's to focus on your intent and remove other distractions. By this I mean, if you're trying to learn acrylics lets say, but you chose to also do it while making an illustration, with a subject you're not yet comfortable drawing, and perspectives you've not yet figured out, you're now adding many hurdles to your process of learning acrylics distracting you from what may have initially been your focus. It all depends though if you're doing it for the sake of learning acrylics. I'm not saying you shouldn't push yourself or take on a challenge. :) But painting some blocks, spheres, and other shapes and textures may allow you to focus more on the paint and techniques you need to learn that you can then apply later to an illustration with other challenges. :)

Hey Crystal! I have not used acrylics for a long time, but painting is hard for a while. I would recommend starting with some basics. Paint a ball, a cube, some fruit, simple still life paintings, etc. to get familiar with colors and technique. From there you can start trying more complex paintings.