thanks

a few things I notice:

*gradient blending,meaning on the sized down verison looks like it flows to one shade to another. Kind of hard on a small scale item. *seems flat.

the lighting to me seems off, seems like its coming sideways,instead of the light direction the ha is in. (my opinion, not sure if its my screen as at night its tinted)

the two that scream out the most is the two reasons.

Im sure other artists could have a better opinion than mine as i don't have lot of hand held items onsite but art is subjective most of the time, so its hard to say. But congrats on this, for a beginner its definitely a good step!

same problems I already had before :/ I really suck at shading... any tips on how to fix the gradient blending?

well first issue is down to your design, as it goes further up, the rod gets smaller so there is less shading room. so your working with already limited room.. so you may need to resign the rod into a rod that has the same shape from top to bottom.(my opinion) you can probably still use the current design though unless staff says something. so this is gonna be a bad example as its art done by someone and credited but its just a sample...

sample

what you do is: you start with a base shade, I usually add the darkest shade. helps if you make a palette. then have a hard brush, then add your lighter shade. do it in layers.

You have what it takes, it just boils down to technique and practicing!