Have i grown?

I took a children’s book illustration class in the fall of 2023. In the class we learned to develop characters, different medium techniques to build our skills and composition, expressions and more. Anyhow, it was the first time I used watercolor. I was very new in developing characters. Here is one of my characters that was to show "surprised”. I have been looking at this image for a week and wanted to paint this character with my “now” skills. Below you can see the comparison. It might not be obvious to anyone but me but I feel I have grown and look forward to keep growing.