'Right colors', 'wrong colors'?

What I am about to say may be subjective, but I really do feel that there are 'right' colors that go together.

This one on the seahorses from my Harmony of Colour book, for instance. Each one presented opportunities to use colors together, and my choices were not random. I picked green as the predominant color for the main seahorse, and introduced a complementary color - red (opposite to green on the color wheel) and then moved a little down the color wheel to orange, and moved up a bit to allow in a blue.

The other seahorse had a palette of purples and pinks, mainly, and the incomplete seahorse to the top right-hand corner was to have been in a palette of cool blues, blue-greens and greens. The seahorse to the bottom left-hand corner was mostly earth-toned.

I also made this an exercise in light, imagining the light source coming from the right, so the shades were light and dark accordingly.

The elephant above  (from the same book) must count as one of my most disappointing pieces so far. It just looks wrong. Blue, yellow and reds with pinks and browns? It just doesn't 'go'. Another abandoned work. (Abandoned also because the drawing was too fiddly and demanding. The fine lines also presented a challenge.)

Does anyone out there agree with me on 'right' and 'wrong' colours?