Hello. This was a quick piece I did recently and entirely on Photoshop to make a study of a phoenix (I've been wanting to do one for a little while now, but couldn't make the time until now).

I had several pictures of secretary birds that I took from several trips to the San Diego Zoo (love that place). I used that as the basic desgin for the bird (if you've seen the second Harry Potter movie, you may've noticed that they may have used a secretary bird for their phoenix design as well), and then I changed it's coloring, plumage, crown (a bit), and tail (and, of course, the fire). It was a lot a of fun.

I didn't want it to be a really detailed peice, I wanted more movement from my hand to produce smoother and broader brush strokes, especially for the fire. The fire was a little difficult. I did look at some pictures, mainly to examine the texture, but it the photos were too orange for what I wanted, so I made mine more oxided (yellow), to help it contrast and envolope the bird more (since orange would've blend in too well with it's plumage). I practiced making the flames with markers in my sketchbook, so the fire is all made up by me.

"Phoenix" only took me a few hours to do and I can't wait to do another quick study like this. It's very helpful in trying to capture the look you want without going into heavy, rendering details. Please send your comments and suggestions. If you have ways to improve the look of the fire, I would diffinitely love to hear about it (fire is a very hard subject to paint successfull). I hope you guys enjoy my "Phoenix" piece, and I'll keep you posted for the next one.