Out Of The Woods

Wow, I really love this piece! Seems like your art's been improving more and more, hehe. x3

Anyway, thoughts about the pic!

When I saw this I was pretty blown away. As someone who does (or tries to do <img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/a/a…" width="19" height="19" alt="" data-embed-type="emoticon" data-embed-id="417" title="Sweating a little..."/>) lots of these natural scenery pics, I can appreciate the painting of the forest in the background. There's just enough detail to suggest the presence of a forest there, good job on that! <img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/h/h…" width="17" height="23" alt="" data-embed-type="emoticon" data-embed-id="599" title=""/>

Your composition's pretty good! It does feel like you put some thought into it. <img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/c/c…" width="20" height="20" alt="" data-embed-type="emoticon" data-embed-id="60" title="Clap"/> I love how everything is sloping to the right, out of the woods, and how there's a dark-to-light gradient there too -- I'm assuming that's intentional? It really reinforces the theme of Fluttershy leaving the forest. I like the contrast the butterfly has with the rest of the colour scheme too.

The middle-ground and background separation on the right is good, with the differences in saturation between the two. And there's a pretty nice contrast between the amount of detail on Fluttershy vs. the rest of the picture, making her pop out more.

What I like less, though, is the colour and the value of the entire picture. First, the colour scheme occupies a really narrow section of the hue wheel. I know you're going for the warm composition here, but with most of the colours being in the warm side of the colour temperature scale, the picture starts looking kinda same-y. Warm light, cool shadows is a pretty good rule to follow.

Also, Fluttershy has the same warm colour scheme as the rest of the picture. This is a pretty noticeable issue, because she starts to fade into the background around her. And I also have an issue with the rocks on the side of the path, because they seem to be in the middle-ground instead of the foreground. This is probably because there's not much difference between the foreground and middle-ground here -- the rocks and the trees both have the same amount of texture, saturation and contrast!

Speaking of contrast, the picture seems to have not enough of that. Opening the picture up in Photoshop, the lowest brightness you have is 20, in the shade on the left side. That's why the picture looks kinda washed-out, it's not got enough dark regions to 'anchor' it, so to speak.

Lastly, though this might be kind of a personal preference thing, I think your sky could use some more blending. I find that a smooth blending on the sky with clouds thrown in looks better, because it makes the sky itself draw less attention away. Though that's a personal preference thing, as I mentioned.

tl;dr:
(+)
1. Background's pretty well done! There's enough detail to suggest that it's a forest, and it looks really nice in your style.
2. The amount of detail on the main subjects vs. the amount of detail on the other parts is nice, makes them pop out.
3. Composition's great! There's nice leading lines slanting from left to right, and the dark-to-light gradient emphasises the theme nicely.

(-)
1. The range of your colour scheme should be extended to include more cool colours and not just warm ones
2. Your foreground-background contrast needs to be worked on more, especially on the centerpiece of the pic (Flutters); use techniques like difference in detail, contrast or colour.
3. The whole picture could use more contrast -- it lacks the dark regions that would make it look less 'floaty'.

Made this pretty long, hope you don't mind <img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/a/a…" width="19" height="19" alt="" data-embed-type="emoticon" data-embed-id="417" title="Sweating a little..."/>
(Is this a low score, by the way? Never done critiques before o: )