Mr. Turtle Needs Some Input

[Camilleon]

Hi, i figured I would give a try at a paintover. You seemed primarily interested in having the water look more realistic, so I focused on that.

Basically, I darkened the water to make the reflection of the turtle more apparent.

A couple other things:
This is a very warm painting, and the turtle is being cast in warm light, so I gave him cool shadows. I used a lens blur with a circular gradient mask to subtly blur the background behind the turtle. I sharpened the turtle using an unsharp mask to help him stand out a little further.

some other things (sorry i didn't do them, but i'm running short on time).
The moss on the ceiling doesn't quite follow perspective. play around with it by selecting it, using transform, and distorting the moss to see what looks better. The same goes for the moss on the foreground wall, it doesn't really look like its coming at us, rather, it kind of flattens out the geometry of the corner in that part of the room.

I hope this helps.

Ah-HA! The "lens blur with a circular gradient mask"--that's what I was wondering about in David's Livestream paint-over. I couldn't figure out what it was. You both use it to nice effect. I will try using it once I have finished detailing Mr. Turtle a bit more--I think I might also try the unsharp mask on him, too. I'm trying to incorporate some of that murky feeling from David's paint-over without losing too much of the room, and I also just played with the moss like you suggested using the perspective transform tool. It does look a bit better! Thank you so much--you have all been so incredibly helpful! :)