I try to have a new phoenix finished for DragonCon every year; this is my 2015 offering.

The concept that drives the Distant Star series is that each star - each sun - has its attendant phoenix. Since they have different chemical compositions, or burn hotter or cooler, and other things, their phoenixes pick up these attributes and we wind up with some firebirds that are way out there. It's great fun! It also gives me a perfectly good excuse to play with pyrochemistry.

I did this with Prismacolor pencils over watercolor. There's also some silver paint pen, enamel-coated dots, and an opal "triplet". (A triplet is a thin wafer of opal sandwiched between a black slate backing and a clear quartz cover.)