Welcome to the forum, Gillian. I like how there's energy in the piece. The texture for the forest background is a nice choice.
You're assessment is correct; more values are needed to push forward the elements in need of focus.
I did an experiment on photoshop. The wings were redone so it can be an area where the audience's eyes can rest. I like to think no line work suggests softness of feathers and quick movement. In your OG piece I agree texture is needed on the bird, but it was too harsh and looked too similar to the background. Maybe use a second texture?
The leaves were given tone to push forward the central character and empathize spatial relationship. Some leaves have a lighter tone to show it is reflecting the sunlight, others are darker to say we're looking at the shadow side. The upper half of the background is made less saturated for the same effect.
With inks less is more and strokes should be economically used. I think you made a good choice of using varied line weight for the stems of the leaves and could have continued that line quality for all objects.
You may already have a list of ink painters you're studying from, but I would like to makes some recommendations. Look up turn of the century artist Charles Dana Gibson and Al Hirschfeld; both are masters of line quality. East Asian art like Japanese sumi-e ink paintings or fine art calligraphy can be inspiring; Google Images doesn't have great examples, so look up an online musuem collection.
