Looking good so far Wendy! I think we all feel apprehensive about posting WIPs for the world to see – it does always feel a bit scary! Definitely a good way to keep motivated and see your own development though!
Regarding your question about colouring – you could always just use vertex paint on a character like this I think. That way you would avoid retopology and UV unwrapping if you are not that comfortable with it just yet.
For the background you could import a nice forest picture as a plane behind your model, and just use depth of field settings with the camera to blur it out. Again I think that could work well on a project like this! 👍
