Blue River

My number one tip that all beginners have to learn to even have a chance of painting a good painting is this: Always make sure to use very, very little liquid white. You just need a film of oil coating the canvas. Nothing will work properly if you use too much liquid white.

Tips for this painting:

Don't kill all of your dark areas / Don't overwork any one area. You evergreens and the big tree on the right are done properly, where there's a lot of dark remaining. This looks like shade, and creates depth.

I can't tell if you put reflections in your water or not, but when you make water, don't forget to pull down some color where the land meets the water to create reflections, and then blend that just enough to soften it. You don't want to blend it until it becomes flat.

Overall, I think you basically understand the techniques, but you just need some practice to understand the feel of the paints. You'll start to be able to tell from feel alone if your highlight paint is too thick, or if you used too much paint on the shadow layer of a tree. And really figuring that out can take years, but getting 90% there can take just a dozen or so paintings.

Yes I see what you mean, thank you