Jeff, A great big warm welcome to this forum and a terrific first post! If you want to learn Photoshop this is the place!! I like the textured BG and the watercolor effect. I think you did a good job putting your "stamp"(couldn't resist) on your chop. My only suggestion is to make the eye a bit smaller. Nicely done!!
Jeff, way to go!! Very nice piece! I only wish for "life" in the eye here. In art, Asian or otherwise, as in photography, the eye of the subject is very important. If your birds eye had a catch light and/or a little detail around it, this would be much more pleasing to me. What I like to do in the process of illustrating a photograph is erase the effects of the illustration in the eye area and maybe a few other key areas with the PS eraser tool set at about 50% (assuming that the changes to the original reside on seperate layers from the BG copy). This give more contrast in technique, getting away from a flattened look and giving a more painted look, IMO:).
But, great job here!