The beach for taxonomy

The last part of Drip, Slap, Boing will end with the two kids sitting on the beach.

These are the images I referenced. Below is the background that I created. I will put shadows as my characters are added on. I have decided to make the background faint because in all the images I looked at with different styles either the color was minimal or it was fade and not so striking. Now I realize this is important so the background does not garb more attention than the characters.