Illustrating Children's Song "Top of the Moon"

[Expat]

As a new Artrage user, I'm trying to create a series of illustrations for a song I wrote about mice who have a splendid life on the moon. The next picture will show that the danger was not as great as it appears here. Challenging at this point: Using the oil brush to distribute shades of color and get smooth transitions without overusing the knife. (Due to inability to control application of color, the sky is too smoothed out for my taste and the stars are too bland). I followed an old tutorial by someonesane and duplicated the moon layer, blurring the one underneath to get a glow. Also from that tutorial, I added texture on two layers filled with concrete and coarse paper with blending mode overlay. What I liked about working with Artrage is that my line work was a guide that could be deleted afterwards. Perhaps some of you can see what I'm trying to do and have some helpful suggestions,