Diddle-Diddle Dumpling

Lately I've been drawing scenes from nursery rhymes, and a few weeks ago I photocopied this one onto cardstock and coloured it with markers. It looked awful. I tried to rescue it by adding coloured pencil on top of the marker. That looked even worse. So I abandoned it and started again. Here's my second try:



It wasn't as monstrous as my first attempt, but it seemed sort of pale and uptight, and it just wasn't making me happy. So in a fit of frustration, I pulled out the first version again, and painted all over it in oils. It came out like this:



I do like the bright colours. But my brushwork is terrible, the edges are rough and blurry, and I have no idea how to handle the light and shade. I'm going to tackle it AGAIN one of these days, and of course I'll post the result for you to see. In the meantime, just let me say that oil painting is a lot harder than it looks!

Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son John,
Went to bed with his stockings on;
One shoe off, and the other shoe on,
Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son John.