Second Painting

Here is my second painting. What have I messed up this time around?
Well, I cheated on this one by using an ink pen to do the lines on the characters. I don't like the hands on Hansel, but I'm not quite sure how I should have handled them. Should they have been in shadow?
It was really fun to work with the warm lighting of the fire, but I have my limits. I gave up trying to shade Hansel and Gretel the color of the fire. Just the idea tired me out. They are so complex, and drawn so small! I need to get some big canvas to work on.

Oh, and this is what I did: I drew a silhouette for the circle of ground illuminated by the fire, and the few background elements, and the tops of the characters. Then I painted inside the silhouettes. (all on printer paper) Then I cut it all out and pasted it on black paper. The theory was that everything outside the illumination of the fire could be simplified into blackness in the night, because the forest is so complicated in real life, the background would have to be infinitely detailed. Then I inked the characters on top of the paint (and used white highlights to outline Hansel's jacket). I really ought to snip off those irritating white parts of the paper.