My project for course: Gouache Techniques for Illustration

My project for course: Gouache Techniques for Illustration

I thoroughly enjoyed this course and find Emma to be an excellent teacher. She helped me discover the difference between gouache and watercolor. It's quite versatile to be able to vary the amount of water to move from opaque gouache to giving it watercolor qualities.
I love Emma's style and wish to emulate it. I find my painting a bit stiff compared to her flowing shapes. I think I painted my building more coloring-book style and filled in too much with color. What I mean is that I didn't let texture come through naturally, such as the black areas in my windows.
Seeing Emma use white on her shutters, for example, taught me to use white instead of the instinctual black to highlight the louvers in the shutters.
One of my mistakes early in the project is not noticing that my arcades were not exactly the same. I hope this gives my painting the effect of the imperfection of hand-sketching, if not the indication of a rookie at work.
While learning to digitize the project (a very welcome part of the course), I immediately realized the importance of the flat sketchbook. At the beginning of the course, I gathered whatever materials I already had without purchasing any recommended materials (like the angled brush, too). When it was time to digitize the image, the spiral notebook obviously kept the flatbed scanner from closing and a slight elevation of the art paper caused the top of my design to scan a bit fuzzy.
The other point I didn't realize was important was the use of white paper. I was able to clean up my cream-colored paper but it was trickier and more time consuming since I had to select a nearby color for every touch-up instead of selecting standard white.
Finally, even though I practiced my lettering and scanned my favorite one, the program on my PC (Paint 3D, an old version), did not have an easy or effective way to lift my lettering to place it on my painting. So, to avoid a meltdown, I simply created a text box and typed the name of the town below my image.

A question for Emma, about signing one's work:
I always assume to place a signature in the bottom right corner, but signatures were not addressed in the course. Is it better not to sign one's art, perhaps when it's a collection of works? If I wish to sign my work, does it have to be in gouache and paint brush, or can it be with a different medium like a thin black marker, or can it even be an electronic signature (text box, type my name)?

Thank you for this amazing course, my first in Domestika. Emma's other products, like her book covers for different authors has inspired me to check out one of the books from the library and to read it :)