CGMythology's Sketchbook

[xelfereht]

Had a mess around to see how It could proceed.
a few notes I have..

the perspective of the boat feels like its under the influence of a different lens, the foreshortening doesnt feel consistent.
I think it helped to bring the birds and rocks a bit closer to compensate and make the piece a bit more interactive with the visual elements.
hands in the water were a bit uniform in posture and distribution making them feel a bit stiff and not too threatening when there isnt a clear look that theyre interested in the boat so i turned a couple of the hands facing away form the boat.
the sun or sky light source seems to be coming from behind them but the whole scene is quite flatly lit.
you can make use of the foreground darkness caused by the light source coming from behind them. you can use it to make use of the candle light which is rather a weak light source so having them subtly lighting up the side of the boat works better if that part of the boat isnt receiving sky light.
not having his skull face so lit can also allow you to make the eye glow more apparent. i didnt up the glow of his eyes but by comparison the glow makes a bit more sense with the darker tones surrounding.

use lights and darks to your advantage, you can really craft parts of the scene to play well with your control over the lighting decisions.
the mountains bit samey and thus bit boring. could add some variety in there for interests sake, make the piece feel that much more rich for quite little effort.
birds felt a bit forced and confined into a tight shape, also a bit too prominent in value
the scythe rowing stick looks a bit under intimidating so could play with that.
the girl, she looks pretty casual and chill riding into hell.
maybe theres room to adjust the pose to something more thought provoking story wise.
and that blue, super pure for such a warm orange dominated lighting scheme.
I gave everything a warm orange photo filter adjustment and tweaked the color balance.

hope you find this helpful and good luck with finishing it up