"Absolutely" on pretty much everything you've written.
Those faces come across quite weird, puffy and somehow not so pretty. Closer observation can reveal a different kind of beauty again, but even once you've found it, zoom out and it will look just as awkward as before. Interesting.
Verve is really a different kind of painter, pushing you to go at it with a different mindset. Digital Art so often is aiming at tight reproductions, some kind of precision that seems to ask someone to noodle on details. Verve throws you out of this kind of obsessing and suggests a more lively approach, demanding control in the artistic mind and not so much in the pixels.
I'm totally conditioned to the latter, though, which makes this the perfect kind of challenge to make me grow, I think. I sometimes see these oil paintings that just show the artist knows where what has to be to create the right kind of sense. I want that, I want to understand that, too!
Anyway, I most likely will accommodate a bit more of pixel level control, as I suggested earlier, but I don't want it to distract me from learning how to express and impress more freely.