In over my head with a commission @@

[Broadway]

This is really cool! (Also btw your tumblr is totally rad) 
I made a quick paintover to show some suggestions for the composition... then I saw this was from a week ago so I dunno if it's already too late. If so, sorry!

I'll list what I changed, just keep in mind I don't ACTUALLY know what I'm doing all that well so take this with a grain of salt :)

My suggestions:



 - I prefer using centered composition mostly for things that are pretty much symmetrical. Otherwise I like the good ol rule of thirds, so I moved the character down to where her head is at a third point. 

 - This meant I had to move the title to the top to make room for her feet, but that kind of works better too I feel because the top is dark and empty, so it bumps up the contrast of the title too (light title against dark sky, rather than against mid-range ground). Also it kind of adds a "ceiling" to the comp so that your eyes don't continually wander off the top of the page.

 - Added some stars to break up the remaining empty sky

 - Bumped up contrast on the character face to make it the most contrasty part of the image (main focal point)

 - The moon was competing with the face, as well as not fitting with the light direction (on the character, light is coming from the front left, so the moon would be behind the camera). So I deleted the moon

 - The tomb is cool but it also was kind of competing as a point of interest, especially the spiky top part. I made it bigger to move the spiky part up and out of the "main" viewing area, decreased the contrast of the tomb as a whole and especially the spiky part to push it back behind the girl, and tilted it so that its lines lead sort of match the "circular flow" of elements for the eye to follow, instead of straight up and down. Also I feel like when it's bigger it helps to solve the "vast empty sky" problem and further keep your eye in the picture.

 - The cross is awesome, but it felt like it was getting cut off on the side which was distracting. I moved it more into the picture so if feels more intentional (I read a design book once that had the rule "If you're going to do something, don't be a wimp about it" - basically, things that look like they might have been unintentional are distracting, so if you're going to do something, do it all the way. This goes for everything from composition, to values/contrast/colors, to font choice, and anything really. I love this rule) Also tilted it a bit to lose the vertical line

 - Moved the tree along with the cross, same reasoning

 - Fixed lighting on the cross (kind of at least) to match lighting direction on girl

 - I didn't even realize until afterwards that the tree was sprouting from the middle ground originally, but I moved it to the foreground. You get a little more depth in the pic this way

 - Added some lighting changes on the ground to further solidify FG/MG/BG separation

 - Also, I didn't do this on purpose but noticed it afterwards - based on the girls' upper leg position, the horizon line should be at or below her waist. I fixed this unintentionally when I moved the girl down :)

 - I didn't bother with the birds (bats?) and the light trails, but they could be put in on top of this.

 - I wasn't sure if there was supposed to be something going on at the base of the grave (is she summoning zombies?) but if so this comp leaves space for it to be more visible, rather than covered by the title.

That's it I think. Sorry if it's too late, but you had a lot of cool stuff going on here already and I'm sure your client will dig anything based on your original!