messing around with Mother Nature

Hi everybody! Here are some more hybrid designs, this time a turtle and a hippo. I am trying to work on my digital painting skills, and find a technique and style that I like, I'm trying to work on using values rather than "filling the lines"... still a long way to go. Anyway, while coloring, these two hippo-turtles moved somehow from my cartoony kingdom to the darker side of concept design, looking a bit to monstrous to me, but... oh well, it's all part of the process.