Asteria said:

did you relate this to like a greyscale art peice?

You could improve this artwork in the future by creating a stronger focal point through increased contrast or subtle lighting on the horse so it stands out more clearly from the background, while still keeping the soft, moody atmosphere. Sharpening important details like the eye and face would add more life, and improving how the hooves interact with the ground or water with shadows or reflections would make the scene feel more grounded and realistic. Slight composition adjustments, such as a tighter crop or clearer separation between foreground and background, along with more texture variation, would add depth and emotional impact to the piece, ESPECIALLY adding a reflection can make the hooves look not so ontop of the water, more IN the water<3

Psycho said:

Made some changes.

Added a reflection and tried to get a little bit more contrast.

Added detail to the eye

Not sure if I made it better or worse lol

I think its Better!!

This is lovely! It's got some great mood to it, the greyscale works really with the dramatic lighting and the vignette. Overall I think it's a really nice composition and piece. If you'd like a few details could really pull it together, here's what comes to mind first:

The first one is a super common thing, and that's that your shading is all really soft—and for the most part, that's totally in line with the lighting you've got! In real life, though, the more of an angle you have between two surfaces the harder an edge you'll find between shadow and light (in softer overall light it may be a subtler difference, but it'll still have a little bit harder of an edge). You've got some spots where you're already doing that, like in the crease of the hip, and that's awesome. Giving just a little more definition like that to other surfaces will help to really sell it.

In practice, that tends to look like shadows with some soft edges and some hard (or just less soft) ones; I tend to do that either by blocking the shadow in with a hard brush and then blurring the softer edges, or by lasso-selecting an area with the hard edge(s) included and then using a soft brush to paint into that selection so I can get both kinds into one shadow. Or you can always carve out the hard edges with an eraser if that's more the way you work.

Another related thing that might help is looking into the concept of ambient occlusion, if you're not already familiar. It's essentially the concept that the closer two surfaces are to each other, the less ambient light bouncing around can reach them to illuminate them. It's part of why you see shadows get darker where two surfaces meet, even if the lighting is otherwise even. You've gotta be a little careful searching that online because there's a lot of iffy explanation of the concept, but it can help add an extra layer of dimension and I'm happy to go digging for a good tutorial later if you're interested (I'd uh, I'd link one now but I just realized it's getting late and I need to finish some storm prep before weather hits, haha).

Might also be worth trying out a very subtle rim light from the upper left to see how that feels, since you're doing backlighting! I wouldn't go overboard with it, just a real thin, gentle bit of light along that edge. It may or may not suit the piece, but sometimes it can tie things together so I'll often try it out and see how it feels.

I had some rough thoughts on how to help with the transition into the water, but haven't tried to paint that in a long time. Before I offered any tips I tried some things, and I think I've got some pointers now, but it took a fair few layers and a full breakdown of how I'd go about something like that is gonna be long and image-heavy. Would you be cool if I put together a thread later tonight on how I did it, and linked you there? I don't want to take over your thread with me getting into the weeds on that haha.

Part of me also wants to toss out the idea of adding a really subtle 35mm film grain over the piece since you're using greyscale with a similar feel to film. Not the overlays with the scratches and stuff, I think that'd be distracting, but just a real light grain to help tie the horse and the environment together. That's another "I'd test it and may or may not like it in practice" thing for sure, though.

Like I said, overall I think you've done a good job! Hopefully at least something in here is helpful. And if I haven't explained something well or you'd like visual examples, feel free to let me know; I've gotta step away for an hour or two but I'm happy to put something together once I'm back.

Keep up the good work!