Angry Sandstorm

I've been taking a fantasy illustration course on my own time outside of work this semester. We draw images based on text descriptions. I was enjoying the piece I started this week, so I thought I'd post a little in progress. Here is the passage:

Balloon and Sandstorm

You are on an exposed desolate plain, watching an approaching sandstorm. A hot air balloon – its envelope stitched together from sheets of sailcloth and other pieces of scavenged material – with a wicker basket swinging beneath it, is being swept towards you by the rising gale. The balloon’s pilot – a swarthy-skinned man, wearing a pair of flying goggles – is clinging on for dear life. The impression of a face has formed within the whirling cyclone of dust and sand, its mouth open wide as if ready to swallow the balloon and its terrified occupant (as in the sandstorm and tidal wave in The Mummy and The Mummy Returns respectively).

Here is my first rough pass:

I wanted to really play up the scale and make the little guy really small in relation.

Here is what it looks like currently:

 I have a lot of things I want to tweak on it, but for only a few hours of work I like where it is going. I'm going to monkey with the balloon placement and work to really hit home the sandstorm, making the mouth look like it's really constructed from sand. I also need to tone down the dark-darks, right now it looks a bit like a real mouth stuck IN some sand. I like the idea of the drawing though and think it's pretty fun.