You guys ROCK, thanks so much!
@Marlene - I will definitely move forward with this style. When I first was working on this piece I tried to marry to ideas together and it did not work for me, it was so flawed and I had to walk away from it. It wasn't until I got rid of one of the ideas and just worked on the steampunk idea that the art start to come alive. I hate to give up on something and I will probably work at trying to get my ideas to work in an image in the future. Hoping for the best on that.
@Suzanne - I do have a pen that I pick-up refurbished, too. I'm trying to get use to working with it but, it is not easy for me, I keep wanting to see where my pen is on the pad and where the cursor is on the screen... at the same time. I guess I have more confidence with the mouse that I don't have to look to see it is. When I first got the pen, I used it and it didn't feel natural to me so I put it up for awhile. I realized that I was being silly and needed to work with it more so I pulled it back out and placed it on my work desk... next to my mouse. My mouse still gets more play time then the pen, but I'm working on it.
I've heard about Gimp and Paint but, I've never used them. I work in Photoshop... CS3 and sometimes Illustrator (still learning this one).