Storm Illustration - IF

Here is the illustration I did for IF's 'Storm' theme. There is something very problematic with the positioning of the girl and the expression in her face. But I really like how the background turned out and more to the point, the quote and the light in the darkness are very meaningful to me personally.

This looks very different to other drawings I've done and as I'm posting this retrospectively, I can definitely see that I've learnt a lot about composition since I drew this.  I like how the storm effect came out in this though.  I scribbled all over the background diagonally with quite a soft (4B?) pencil, then went over it with a white chalk pencil. Then I scratched over it all with the needle of a compass which created the little white flecks.  The 'light' is coloured with a regular old yellow highlighter pen.