Pirates! (WIP)

My nephew Pit, has developed, like many children his age, a passion for "Jack and the Neverland Pirates" cartoon, so I thought I would make him a picture with my take on the theme.
Here you can see the (slow) evolution of the piece starting from the minimalistic sketch I posted weeks ago (yes, that's how slow I am!).

I imagined the "pirates" on a beach near the seaside town of Albisola (near Savona, Italy). The landscape is not very accurate. I actually think the beach is more stony than sandy, but I took a poetic license for the occasion.

I am not so passionate about going to the beach, as I am a pretty bad swimmer and I don't like sunbathing. My family has a country house and we always went there for the summer, so I grew to enjoy hiking and running in the grass more than building sand castles. Hence my poor knowledge of the beaches near home! ;)

For sure Bella and Pit will have a blast in June, when we go to visit Italy, though. Of course they are the two pirate-wanna-bes in the picture, although I realized I made them to look a bit older than they actually are.

Can you spot the mistakes I made?

My friends caught immediately the weirdness in Bella's left leg...I was hoping it would go unnoticed, but clearly it was not so inconspicuous. I managed to fix that while coloring, luckily.

The sky had me concerned for a while. I built up layer after layer of light greyish blues because I did not want a color that was too intense, but at some point I picked by mistake a marker, I don't remember which exactly, that turned out to produce the most in-your-face aqua effect ever. I spent the rest of my time that evening just trying to tone it down. I think I saved it in the end, but just barely.

There are also issues with the prospective, which I did not pay too much attention to, since there were no buildings in sight (how smart am I?). The perspective blunder became evident to me only half way through the coloring phase, so it was too late to do something about it. We will have to live with it! :D

Not having watched cartoon, I have only a vague idea of the content, which I assume must be tame and rather sweet, given it's targeted to small children. Anyways, since I am a pacifist, abhor the use of weapons, and dislike to see children handling toy-guns or toy-swords, I omitted them from the picture. Maybe this position is too strict (actually, as a kid, I would have loved to have a toy-sword) , but what can I say...it does not feel right to see little ones pretending to shoot or spear each other. Bottom line, my pirates are more bohemians of the sea, treasure hunters, than cannon shooting ocean outlaws.^^

The crocodile was suggested by my husband, to pay homage to the Disney's Peter Pan movie. Of course it's just an inflatable to help the kids swim and I really did not want to make it too realistic, because it's not supposed to be threatening. However, the more I colored it (bright yellow and green), the more my husband complained that it looked like it was going to attack the children. Hence, the bright pink scales...the definitive deviation from natural colors appeased my husband and, hopefully, will make sure Pit will find it funny, not scary. ;)

That's all for the moment. I have been adding a few more details and I'll show them to you, as soon as the sun is out and I get to take a decent picture of the final piece.