without that shirt thingie it would have blended a lot better..oh well

Ya know, I can be such a moron sometimes. I do the whole picture, and I keep thinking, remember to blend the tail, remember to blend the tail, remember to blend the tail. Guess what I forgot to do? Yah, blend the tail. (smacks himself across the face)

hey man, you should keep the reference parts visible all the time, that way its much easier to blend the edges correctly (and easier not to miss stuff like that :)).

the phoenix isn't bad, other than the bottom blending problem, but... in the future, could you not run a single line of dark pixels down the edge? The lower-right corner was nearly impossible to blend into, because the bright yellow abruptly becomes a black line. No matter what I did, it still looked like, well, two seperate tiles, rather than one continuous image.

Other than that -- the gradients were fun to work next to. Hard, but fun. I got a lot of use out of the 'dodge' and 'burn' tools. =)

nokturnal: honestly I did keep the reference part visible, I always do. My brain just switched into moron mode.

isildur: yah looking at it now, I realize i erred when trying to blend the yellow in there with the black, it did leave a dark line. sorry =( but I shall make sure to stay away from that in the future, this is all still a learning experience for me, and compared to my first one, this is a frickin Picasso =)