Portrait of an African-American woman, watercolor

I have been going to my regular long-pose model group at Patris Studio and Art Gallery for a while and each time I find something new with which to challenge myself. Today's model was African-American, which led to a couple of challenges. First, skin tone...I had just gotten a grasp on light skin color. And second, her curly hair.

I started out with a rough pencil sketch
Then added in a background color.  I'm always using blue so I thought green would be a good change of pace and contrast well with her yellow shawl.
Overall I think it turned out pretty well. I am pleased with the skin tone but it did get a little muddy. The coloring on the shawl was quite by happy accident because I was trying to get a slight orange color, but I didn't get the red mixed in all the way into the yellow. Overall it has a cartoony look to it which was not my intention, but I'm happy with it.
It's always interesting learning from other artists at the studio. There was actually another watercolor painter there this month. He did an amazing job letting the white of the paper show through to highlight the hair and face. When I look at my painting, I had to add white to create those highlights...I need to let the paper do the work of the white! Maybe I forgot I was painting with watercolor instead of acrylic since my last few pieces were acylic.