Sacred Ashes • Elemental Phoenix

Glory, like the phoenix 'midst her fires, Exhales her odours, blazes, and expires.

- Lord Byron

But unlike glory, the Sacred Ashes of the Phoenix, still smoldering, will reconstitute, revive and manifest a spectacular rise.

The Elemental Phoenix is the first legendary card in the Steem Monsters deck and the first legendary I received in my first booster pack. Read about it here: My First Legendary

And that's why I created Sacred Ashes for the Steem Monsters Art Contest. The Elemental Phoenix, in my opinion, is the best card in the deck with the quintessential comeback story that starts in the ashes. We can learn from her and even apply it to our Steem Monsters battles. For instance, every time we get obliterated by

@clove71 we can find courage in the Phoenix as we get back up to fight again. We can also take the lesson and apply it to crypto markets or our personal lives, etc. Life is full of ups and downs and each time we go down in flames we have to embrace the Sacred Ashes because at that lowest point we have our chance to rise again and do it better the next time around.

The Process

I photographed this dead chunk of Joshua tree on the desert floor in the Mojave last Spring. The trees are similar to the Phoenix in that they survive in a harsh environment and when they go down they go down hard because they are top heavy with multiple outstretched branches. But that's not why I'm showing you this photograph. This is the image I used to create Sacred Ashes.

I manipulated the above image in Photoshop with a duplication and a horizontal flip so I could put the wing-like shadows side by side. I then applied a color inversion and some color filters for a thoroughly burnt and toasty look!