Sing a song of sixpence

Sing a song of sixpence a pocket full of rye,
Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened the birds began to sing,
Oh wasn't that a dainty dish to set before the king?
The king was in his counting house counting out his money,
The queen was in the parlour eating bread and honey
The maid was in the garden hanging out the clothes,
When down came a blackbird and pecked off her nose!

I've been doing al lot of sketching of nursery rhymes lately and this immediately popped into my head when I found out "song" was the theme for this week's Illustration Friday. It is not totally finished yet, but the most important part representing "song" is, so I thought I'd go ahead and post it. i hope to finish it up this weekend and I'll post the final

I've been working in Painter for about a year now and could never figure out one problem I kept having until now. I don't know if I could even explain it but the magic wand tool wasn't capturing all the pixels I needed it to, so I finally figured out a way to make it work and the result gives me a more painterly look that I've wanted. It takes a little longer to draw out and get my layers right before painting but I'm finally getting the result I want without touching up the problem in Photoshop.

Check out this "little" link a friend sent me the other day!