Create your illustration

Hello!
it is definitely an ambitious illustration. giving a sense of scale like that is really not easy.
Despite that, my first piece of advice is to leave spaces of sky in the horizon line, in order to give more breathing spaces that will help to convey the sense of distance and vastness. We will try to keep the important details towards a third of the width, since that's where the eye is going to focus.

Next, we will try to simplify the background into several layers of landscapes at different depths and heights, on which we can draw buildings. The overlapping layers give a sense of depth and the impression that it is an entire city without having to draw each house. In fact, the further away an object is, the more it is flattened by perspective, and therefore we will also draw the path to the castle in a zigzag, to show that the path is long and the city is large, and to give this flattened effect.

For the buildings, the idea is to only draw the roofs; the bottom is hidden by other buildings, the ground, rocks, etc... and so you almost only see the silhouette; you can sketch small lines that represent other buildings along the slopes of the hills, but the further you move from the peaks, the fewer lines and visible buildings there are. It's a complex image, so you need to simplify as much as possible to not lose the viewer's eye.

Finally, I am not convinced by the idea of keeping the entire character off-screen: we might not understand that the fabric is part of a cape. At a minimum, we should keep a hand or another recognizable element in the image, but I recommend bringing the entire character back instead.

Anyway, it's a good job! Keep it up!

Hello Isaiah,

It's really a good composition base! :) In my opinion there is a major problem, it is a little too "stunned". You have used the third party rule but you have saturated a lot of tension points and lines of tension, so it gives a very busy effect, and in addition your format is little elongated which accentuates the compressed side. To rectify this I just advise you to go on a more elongated format and to shift one of the elements, here the character. In this way our gaze at first poses on the character, then the road leads us to the Torii which is highlighted by the rule of third parties, by sunlight. The idea of ​​putting a tree at the bottom right to reinforce the composition is very good but your tree is a bit small 'does not hesitate to come and assume your idea thoroughly by agreing the tree. Ditto for those on the left blank of the mountain, rather than drawing one or two, you can come and suggest a mass that also creates a line to come and guide towards the Torii.