A Gingerbread Christmas First Try

I've started this illustration last year and I'd like to finally finish it this year. I'm not satisfied about how it looks right now, mainly because it looks far too flat. In the next step I will rework the composition quite heavily. For this version I have used two stock photos by stock-by-dana.deviantart.com as reference for the sleigh and the gingerbread people. In the next step though, I will use my own resources as reference for the sleigh and the gingerbread people. Regarding the gingerbread people I'm pondering, if I should give them some sort of hands, even if it would be stylised hands like Santa's. I want to bake some gingerbread men later today. Hopefully I won't burn them like I did years ago. I will try to bake some sort of walking gingerbread man, too.

My plans for the next step of this paintings are:

- Paint a more realistic sleigh, Santa and Santa's reindeer. I will use some reindeer stock photos as reference for Santa's reindeer and a stock photo instead of a gingerbread cookie for Santa.
- Keep the gingerbread reindeer, but move it.
- Paint the characters, the house and the environment in a more realistic way regarding the volumes, so that they get more of a 3D appearance.
- I might move the house, though I'm not sure about that.

Any feedback and critique is very much appreciated. I will upload the next step as a separate deviation, which I will update with the new WIP steps. I want to keep this for history reasons. You can see all the steps of this painting in one place over at www.wipnation.com. Here's the link to my painting, where you are also welcome to give me a critique using that site's redline feature. I did work about 22 - 25 hours on this version.

Stock used for reference
For the gingerbread house and trees: World Showcase Christmas 10 by
For the sleigh and the gingerbread family Gingerbread Man and Santa's Personal Ride by
My thanks go to the stock providers for their awesome stock photos!