No worries Neil. What Kris said is true, but I'm sure you'll be willing to take his input to improve your graphics. Look at the other examples in the forum and see how you can do as well!
Don't use the pencil on Paint, lol. It looks a lot better if you edit each pixel individually until you can get better at it.
Zoom in and use the pencil tool on PS or Paint.net (easier to make it transparent) and put it to 1px size.