Susan and The Water Sprite

a children's story illustration assignment, for the tale "Pretty Susan and the Water sprite"

It's not a well known story; I took it from one of my illustration teacher's books. I wanted to avoid getting into something people already had a clear vision about, so I picked one I had never heard.

The story goes that the water sprite has his eye on Susan, a young woman from a poor-as-dirt family, and when he demands that she marry him, she says, "well how can I marry you if my family doesn't have cloth to make dresses out of?" and "how can I marry you when I don't have livestock for the wedding feast?" etc. She agrees to marry him in exchange for these riches, thinking he could never give them to her, but he does, and she spends the rest of her life trying to avoid him. The tale goes on.

A lot of frustration went into this painting, since it was for a class. I think it turned out well enough, but it's missing some of the detail that the story had, like that the water sprite is supposed to be holding a violin, and in reality Susan is supposed to be more coy than guarded. But the real achievements for me were the composition and environment. I still feel like I need practice drawing backgrounds that aren't totally static/don't have nearly enough detail and this was a lot better than some of my past attempts (see: my entire gallery)