Your in the best place to learn Blender for sure.
My advice to you whilst learning Digital Art and Blender, there are so many ways of doing everything, like you found out with your sea. Learn different ways of doing everything, but use the most productive way for the result you are looking for.
For example, an image plane is fine for this render, but if you were to animate the man’s bow to the obelisk, you would also need to animate the waves.
Also the ship wreck is so far in the distance and tucked away behind the cliff, at first I thought there was a man with a raincoat and hat on, it may be satisfying creating the sail but a lot of effort for little reward.
You could try sculpting the sand around the base of the obelisk or have you seen @cbaileyfilm on CGCookie YouTube Channel talking about Geometry Nodes.
Nice work overall.
