@Abigail-Hookham What a cute illustration! This is exactly what my eldest looks like whenever she’s cooking. 
️ Is it for a book?
To your question. Contrast is one thing, but your potion bottles don’t really have much of a silhouette, even in the darker image, and so in order to see them (even after I had read that they were in the left corner), I had to zoom in. If I were to draw attention to the bottles I’d do a couple of things:
- Lighten the value of the bottles significantly, and light them better. Maybe I’d even add an in-image light source to directly shine on them. I don’t know what’s in the bottles, but of it’s potion I would think that could be florescent, maybe? That way the potion could be the light source. In any case, I’d fiddle with the value enough so that you could zoom way out and still see them. I don’t think darkening the dresser is wrong, in fact I think that looks better, but that might just be me.
- Make the bottles bigger, either by increasing their actual size, or by moving them closer to the camera.
- Declutter the rest of the image. Right now, there are a lot of things calling for my attention in the image, and I think this makes it harder to notice the bottles. There are elements there that I don’t think are needed to tell the story, such as the bed, the cord for the heater, the sock or the fairy lights, and elements that might be needed but are a bit too prominent (such as the bubbles and the splashes). I’d consider removing or simplifying the crap out of the unnecessary elements, and lowering the contrast on the elements that do support the story but that are mostly decorative (such as the bubbles).
- There is a splash that tips the bottle over. I’d strengthen the trajectory line for that one, and brighten it up, to help guide the viewer’s eye to the bottle. I’d also not have the stray splash have a looptiloop line, but keep it to a simple arch, to make the guiding of the eye more straightforward.
That’s all I can think of atm. Good luck!
