It would look really cool if she was walking towards the viewer, but not too close and maybe at a slight angle. BTW- that background is amazing.

Thanks :3

The lighting is super cool. I really like how you have a grasp of atmospheric perspective. :) The trees though are a little short in the front imo like extend those branches up! The rocks look like they are laying on top of the leaves, when there should be some leaves on top of the rocks or folded up against the sides of the rocks like you have with them laying on the trunks! I would also layer smaller leaves in front to make it more opaque and not so see-through. :) It's gonna look great when it's done! <3

I will be sure to add those details, thanks much for the input!

No prob :D Detail is everything and makes people go "OH MAN I wouldn't have thought to do that, they really pay attention", when they look at your piece.

Nice sense of depth so far.

Just be careful when using foliage brushes though. Using a leaf brush can certainly make life easier when drawing trees and such, but sometimes it takes a little bit of work to make it look as natural as it should be. Otherwise it's pretty easy to spot when you use a brush for the leaves because they are all so uniform in shape and edge clarity. You can avoid this by either painting on top of the brush leaves to give it more of a hand-painted or natural feel, and/or I've also found it can help to create a few different layers of the brushed leaves and give each layer a slightly different effect (like, make a lighter layer on top, a mid-toned layer, and a darker layer underneath, or make a lower layer of leaves more blurred).

You may also want to try blurring the trees and leaves in the far background a bit. That can sometimes help with depth.

I'll add some hand-drawn highlights/shadows to parts of the leaves and play around with them some more. Also blurring the furthest trees is a good idea. Thanks!

I've gotten "votes" for all 3 different ideas of Van's pose now, haha, but I think Imma make her curled up in the midground.. though I'll doodle all three and see which feels the most right. Thanks!