First: I am loving the colors you've picked out for the figure. They are very vibrant and reminiscent of the fauve pallet and I love the fauve pallet so kudos to you!

Now, let us get to the rest of the critique!

Your figure is actually very well done but I think if you do a few more things she would be able to have more impact. As far as the highlights go it just looks like you've placed them randomly and the highlights on the hair and skin and tail look very out of place. Instead of highlights they look like holes or that she is made of some sort of dull plastic. Her eye need shadow as well - even if they are red they would have some sort of darker red in them. I also think that a wider range of value would do this picture a lot of good.

Now for the background: While I do admire the boldness of the color scheme it is really distracting and sort of takes away from the picture because it is the thing with the least amount of detail in it. Why is her towel so crisp and straight? It looks like she's hovering over it because there are no wrinkles in the fabric. The sand bugs me as well simply because it's just this vast thing of yellow and there's no evidence that she has any weight whatsoever because the sand has no...I want to say 'humps' even if that is probably not the right word at all. The water looks like there was a minimal amount of effort into it, as does the sky.

I think this image could be so much butter if there was a light source and indication that your character had a sense of weight. As it stands now she's floating on a magic carpet.