Buried in sand or cement?

Yesterday I worked on a painting that I started in class Thursday night. My cousin Amy had sent me this cute picture of her kids when they were in Florida and I thought it might be a good palette knife challenge. Amy-if you are checking the blog today, thanks for the reference photo! From left to right, that's Danny, Teddy, Jack, and Betsy.

I took some photos along the way of the progress. Here is where I was after class on Thursday.

I started with the faces because that is usually the most challenging part and yesterday I felt they needed a little refinement. Here they are after a little more work.

And here are a few close up shots of the faces.


Then I started in on the shoes, the shovels, and finally the sand. I wanted to make sure the sand color was different enough from the skin tones but still read as sand, When I stepped away for awhile, I wondered if the color I used made it look like they were buried in cement instead of sand. What do you think?