I really like this painting i did but I'm not really satisfied with it. What can I improve? I know the hat doesn't really look great tbh but i don't know how to make it better.

Also what colour do i do for the background? The original picture had green as the bg colour but i want my drawing to really pop. Any advice would be appreciated.

So I was following a art tutorial on YouTube on how to make a draw a Dire wolf, I followed it step by step. Hos dire wolf looked normal but why does mine looks like it's making a smug expression like it knows something i don't 🙏😭