It's a good start keep going with it

I sometimes find it useful to limit how light and dark the colors are I work with originally and just make sure I've got the shapes and volumes of light/mid/shadow working and then add dark darks and light lights as needed.

I think right now you don't need any of these dark blue/purple lines on your scarf accept maybe the exterior edge lines if you want. Then as you build it up you can add these darks, but maybe as volumes. If you want to make a dark interior line do so because it's a thin dark area, not because it has to be a line. If that makes sense?

Even if I make initial black sketch lines I tend to tone them down to semi-dark as soon as I go to color. And the lines don't have to be all one color, maybe as the line fades it goes to a slightly lighter dark. Hopefully this adds gradients of shadow where otherwise you have very strict and precise changes.

REFERENCE - I think you need more and better reference for this. Your sample scarf is very dark with a pattern. I know I couldn't see light and shadow in that very well. Why not look at patternless scarves/shawls that are of a color and with a light source that makes clearly identifiable shadow shapes? Then you have the reference you need to make those shapes. From there you can add your pattern or change the color as you like.

If you are trying to emulate the reference image I mean...it's basically a single dark blue/black color. So that's probably what I'd art.

I can't see a new reference?

So you've got several things that may receive different art treatment.
1. Your exterior lines. Looks like black is what you're tending to go for and I do the same a lot.
2. Your interior lines between objects. Right now you are treating these in different ways. Example: Between the shirt and the scarf you are using a very dark purple which I'd think of as the darkest dark for the scarf. But between the arm and shirt you're using black lines that don't match your shirt or arm colors. For this type of line I usually choose which object the line is a part of and make it a dark shadow area of that color.
3. Any lines inside a single color group. Example: to define your chin you are using a black line even though this is not an exterior line. This may look better if you make this line the darkest dark of your skin color (assuming it is representing a dark area).

What I was saying before is that I feel like by starting with very dark lines in the interior of an object (in this case your scarf) you are handicapping yourself because these lines will dominate further progress you make to define the light and shadow because of the huge contrast you're starting with. So as you're laying down your mid-tones you've either got to strictly follow those dark lines or you end up fighting with them to make any changes.

I recommend either...
1. A lines approach starting with a strong underlying sketch that can give you enough information that you've made those light/shadow decisions before you paint and so you can just fill in the gaps, or
2. A volumes approach where you ignore interior lines and make shapes that suggest the shapes of the object(s) and how the light hits them. And then add those dark darks, not necessarily as lines, but as some of your deeper shadows.

Right now the best things are the birds, they look fantastic. And I believe that's because they have a uniform artistic treatment. Black exterior line and no interior lines at all, just simple, strong volume shapes.

What would happen if you also treated the character that way? With no interior lines at all, only color volumes that suggest shapes?

Note that right now you've set up the birds to be flat colors, while there's a definite light source ( from the upper right) on the main character, so you have 2 different ways you're showing light in this image. Usually you want to have one type of uniform light treatment for everything in the image.

Also right now the greens on the face are a bit distracting and aren't in your palette. Even if maybe you're trying to suggest green make-up you probably wouldn't actually see "green". The way someone might normally handle this is to take the base skin color and push it a bit more toward the green, but that can be quite challenging to figure out what exact color can similuate your greenish without looking wrong.

ps.
I found this maybe it'll be interesting to ya. I thought it was interesting.
http://i.imgur.com/bC9im75.png</a>