Its Harder Than It Looks

I am a brave soul (to post these), but learning and sharing is important.
I was following a heated debate that was going on, on Craigslist a few weeks ago, all about formal art training....the pro's and con's.
I am not formally trained, but always secretly wished I had been able to afford to go to an art college where I could have been 'shown' how to do things and why. I'm not really good at following book instruction, I'm more of a visual learner I guess. I'm not saying you can't do this on your own, I just think it would be easier with someone showing how/why. And hey....I'm getting older....easy would be nice for a change.
Anyway, here are two examples of why I think formal training would be helpful. These are my first attempts at painting small (5"x 7").
I expressed my interest in a recent post about the daily painters, and thought...."Hey, I could do that too"..........not! How humbling.
The first one?...the pepper?......I fussed and fussed with that thing until it became just a muddy mess. Whats missing? My understanding of colors and their relationship to each other, and my experience using 'tube' acrylics....a whole different animal than wall and craft paint.
So for my benefit as well as others who may struggle with this, I'll post some links to sites I had discovered a while ago but obviously didn't spend enough time studying....they're on color theory.
Link one. Link two. Link three.
And here's the link again to the dailypainters website, so you can see the difference (in the quality of the work).
I'll keep on working on these til I'm happy.
I'm glad I'm stepping out of my comfort zone and forcing myself to learn new things....its all good :-)