From the Painting Guide: I'm intrigued as to why you haven't included the swan's legs and feet ... at a guess I'd say it's because you couldn't remembert exactly sure how they look or what colour they are and didn't have a reference photo (or a live swan) to hand to check. In terms of composition, it's better to have things go right off the edges, rather than just touching them as the wings do on the right and the body at the bottom, or just going off the edge as the tail on the left, though this may simply be a result of cropping the photo. If you find you "run out of space" when painting, you can either rework it again, smaller, or add a bit of extra paper to the edge (Lucien Freud has done this, so you'd be in excellent company!). To avoid it happening in the first place, sketch the elements of the painting in before you start painting, using a pencil or a brush.

Overall, the painting is rather flat; though there are touches that start to give it a feeling of 3-D, it needs more. If you look at the greyscale version below, you'll see that the three elements in the painting are all separate tones: the reeds and foreground dark, the sky medium, and the swan light. The tones on the swan need to be a bit more varied. At the moment the wing blends into the body – I'd expect there to be some shadow created by the wing, which would help give it definition. Probably also shadow on the neck somewhere, depending on where the light was coming from. Also add a bit of light and shadow into the reeds behind the swan, ensuring that the light is coming from the same direction as on the swan.