January 17th, 2009
Photoshop and drawingtablet

One of the last two contests I'll be joining for a while. It's probably also the last wolf I'll draw for some time. If I didn't know any better, I'd almost say I was a wolf-artist! This here is Phoenix, and he belongs to =Wolf250. I simply fell in love with this design, which is why I wanted to draw him. Plain and simple.
We were allowed to pick our own themes, so I decided to go with the theme 'Twilight'. No, not that ridiculous book, the actual twilight. For those of you who don't know, twilight occurs twice a day, once slightly before sunrise and once slightly after sunset. What happens is this: the sun is located just underneath the horizon, so it isn't illuminating the sky directly. But the sun's rays do still reflect off particles and such in the air, which means it isn't truly dark yet/anymore either. The sky will often look dark bluish instead of just dark, stars look less bright and there might be an orange glow near the sun's location. Fun fact: the twilight is also known as the 'Blue Hour'. I wish I had known that some six years ago, when the Blue Hour was my graduation subject in art class. If I had known, perhaps I wouldn't have flunked it.

Aaaanyway, moving on. I chose to draw Phoenix while playing on the wing. I don't know why, but he just looked like a playful puppy. And since he is some sort of phoenix-type character, I presumed he probably likes the sun a lot. So in short, Phoenix wants the sun to rise, so he can start a brand new day doing nothing but playing. (Sounds like fun, really.) So yes, I chose to depict the day-version of twilight, not the night-version. It seems a lot of people think that there is only a night-version.
I guess Phoenix can't really wait for the sun to fully rise on its own, so he's already started flying loopti-loops. Dunno why. Ask him. I just felt like drawing an insanely difficult pose. ^__^