OP here, decided to try painting this again after all the advice I got. I did some research on tiling, but I'm not sure if I'm doing it correctly (still seems like blobs of paint to me)
At the start I used the color picker because I was thinking "this is a render exercise where I should focus on the shapes and transitions" but then I changed my mind and started trying to pick colors myself based on the ref
I've spent 3 hours on this so far. I feel like im getting lost again, but I took anons advice about using the soft brush between transisitions and then I use a mixer brush for some blending.
Any more advice/thoughts before I continue on? The temptation to blend everything is there, but I try not to keep the forms (I blurred the image a couple of times and I think I got a good read on them)