Thanks Jon! "Species" ? Oh yeah! I guess it may have a bit of that feel to it. Mostly my stuff usually has more of a painterly quality to it when doing PS works of just imaginary things like this, and on purpose = I like my works to look "different," I wasn't trying for photorealism...even when I use 3d apps I find I often take the images later and do more of a painting with them. In PS I always do a lot of painting on layers which is just something I enjoy doing (my background is as a painter in traditional media, I enjoy taking photo "snapshots" too but am not a photography expert by a long shot. I do some astrophotography with telescope equipment, but that's a whole different ball game).
Thanks too Patrick! Yeah, it was a freebie version of PS LE which got me interested in PS (my very first art app, though, was Xara X which is a vector drawing app = one I still use and enjoy a great deal), then an offer came for PS7 and I was "hooked" on PS, and now I use it along with everything else in the tool box, I think of it for all postwork, texturing, just "painting" images, etc. etc. = it's better than sliced bread!