nice work -- another water layer on top with lowered opacity can be used to make the light appear to be over your sub

Thanks for the tip Alan2641! I'll play with it and resubmit. Cheers.

Thanks for the FAV Nishagandi!

OK Alan2641, I added another water layer on top, and played with the opacity and layer styles, but couldn't get it to look quite right, so I added a few beams with the pen tool, stroked with soft white, and gave them a blue-ish hue. I like it better, so thanks again for the tip!

Oh, this looks really really good! love it ♥

very nice entry!

nice work...good luck

hehehe.. lots of fun here

Nice idea, but there are many places you didn't use the smudge tool. Also unless you go to the high resolution image you can't tell there was any smudging done. I would suggest smudging more and then running a paint daube filter over it. Also I would make a new layer fill it with black and set to color dodge. With a 5% opacity soft brush paint the highlights in the image. This will make it look more like a painting.

Revisited the image and tried the suggestions above....successfully?? Probably not but its just another step in learning and experimenting.
Thanks

Author, remove your name from the comment you made, 'cause contest is supposed to be anonymous!...

YIKES! my humblest of apologies!

Perfection

Nice work . I think it would look better if you apply some blur to the snail edges (eeeeeeeeeeca!)...

nice

it looks like the snail lil bit "flying" author.... btw, good chop

great chop. love the use of souce

good idea

can't really give suggestions at this late of an hour..just say good luck and hope for the best.. the background is a bit dark... good luck

@GolemAura hehehe I know... I thought of making a diff background... But I was procrastinating... And when I started working only 3 hrs something left

Idea is good, need to improve

Oh damn... I forgot that one couldn't edit one's entry after the submission timeline is over... I wanted to include an sbs, but alas it's too late T_T