Thanks Solar.
It looks a lot better now I've finished it. I used the original drawing I'd done as reference for shading and such, but I changed so much I might as well have not bothered.
What I have learned from this is: I need a new mouse. Drawing in the shading and such on the sword took ages because it kept wobbling.
And for anyone else considering this in future, make your backgrounds grey while working. A white background can strain your eyes after a while, I find, and it makes it hard to judge colour properly because of the contrast.
Oh and for those who are curious, I'm using Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.0. Though I used my copy of PSP Photo Pro X3 to put the background in because it has a ton of gradients to use and I have no idea how to put a background in while using layers in Photoshop.