Illustration 1 What's Missing

This piece is supposed to afford me the opportunity to do some work that will add missing elements to my current portfolio. What's missing from my portfolio? A lot.

I chose to base this illustration on my own writing, but changed my mind several times about which piece of writing it should be. My final choice was this story:



This is the rough drawing...



Here's the finished watercolor painting....


There are so many things wrong with it. I tried to correct one the most glaring problems, but am wondering if I only made it worse. There are some wonky striations that are the result of scanning the painting in, in 2 pieces, but I tried to camouflage most of them. So I'm back to the drawing board to start all over...literally. I really like the idea of the shark as a shadow, but the painting doesn't accomplish anything close to what I'd hoped for.