Also known as the Vermillion Bird of the South 南方朱雀

Suzaku (or Zhu Que in Chinese) is one of the Four Symbols of the Chinese Constellation, along with Genbu (Black Tortoise) Seiryuu (Blue Dragon) and Byakko (White Tiger). Suzaku represents the South, the summer season and the element of Fire.

As promised the last and long-awaited Suzaku. I can finally say goodbye to the Series. I'm very sorry it took me so long to paint Suzaku, but I've never handled red colours nor bird anatomy very well

As you may know I already made attempt at painting Suzaku a couple of months prior. The WIP is still lying around in my scraps. So why didn't I finish that one? Well, despite everyone's encouragement I found I no longer had the inspiration to finish it. I only liked the flame effects and head anyway.
I wanted to make Suzaku redder and I wanted a better BG. So I fiddled around with the idea of painting more mountains. Somewhere along the way it started to look nice and I simply finished it. The rain is a last minute thing. Sorry if it doesn't look approriate. See Suzaku's approach here as the end of Spring and the coming of Summer

Oh and just a tidbit more about Suzaku which I stole from Wikipedia. It's not much though.

The Vermilion Bird is an elegant and noble bird in both appearance and behavior, it is very selective in what it eats and where it perches, with its feathers in many different hues of reddish orange. The Vermilion Bird is often mistaken for the Fenghuang (Chinese Phoenix) due to similarities in appearance, but the two are different creatures. The Fenghuang is the king of birds, while the Vermilion Bird is a mythological spirit creature of the Chinese constellations.

I sincerly hope I'm not disappointing everyone with this final version. Thank you for sticking with me through the series with wonderful comments, suggestions and favourites. You've made it all possible. A big hug to you, my friends, you know who you are

~Vyrilien

Medium: Painter 2, PS (for the rain, this tutorial used: [link]), Intuos 2

Time taken: I'd say an hour or twenty, not counted all the time spent thinking up of a good idea and my previous failed attempts. If I did it would probably come down to 200 hours

Other parts in the Series (Four Symbols):

Seiryuu: [link]
Byakko: [link]
Genbu: [link]

And a hidden Fifth...

Huang Long: [link]