Phoenix Sorceress

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A character for a fantasy setting. My group has not yet decided which system to use. Most likely choices are Dungeons and Dragons 3.5e or Mutants and Masterminds 3e (my personal top choice), though this might end up being our first foray into D&D 4e.
This is gonna be a relatively short game using quite powerful and renowned characters, so I came up with an archmage type of character.

---- THE CHARACTER ----

Marquise Adena uruth von Rosered is a wealthy noblewoman, trusted adviser and ally to the king and one of the greatest sorceresses in the land, being the headmistress of the prestigious Golden Phoenix Academy of Sorcerous Studies.

As a child, she had a good heart but was a bit bitter, for she suffered from a debilitating disease, or perhaps a curse, that none had been able to cure. Unable to do much physically, she set her mind on reading and studying. But the illness was getting worse and it seemed she wouldn't live long.

However, one day the little girl witnessed an aerial battle between a phoenix and a dragon. The flaming bird managed to make the scaled beast flee, but was severely wounded in the battle and fell from the sky, right in front of Adena.

In a burst of light and flames that enveloped the girl, the sacred creature renewed itself, reborn as a young phoenix, which soon flew away. The young Adena was not incinerated, but instead the flames found her soul pure and her heart good, and restored the child's health.

Since then, Adena has adopted the imagery of the phoenix and put even more effort in her studies, becoming a renowned archmage and a force of light in the world. As befits the symbol she has taken, she specializes in spells involving fire, light and healing. She is also known for extending her life with magic. While she doesn't look young anymore, she is actually much older than she looks.

The headmistress is stern and something of a snob, with seemingly no time for frivolous pursuits. Her intimidating presence and authoritarian demeanor often hide how good she truly is. She is a widow and, despite her beauty being mostly faded at this point, her wealth and power don't fail to attract several suitors, all of whom end up rejected, though every now and then she at least takes a lover for a while.

---- THE DESIGN ----

I wanted to make a sorceress that was not the cliche of an extremely beautiful young woman dressed in a couple strips of cloth. So I made her an older woman with elegant clothing covering her whole body.
This time I felt like the white, red and gold combination fits the character very well.

Her Staff is fully metallic and magically resistant to damage, thus being both a magical tool of great power and a melee weapon when needed

Since she is extremely wealthy, her jewelry includes huge gemstones, though I didn't want to go overboard, so I just gave her a few pieces of jewelry. If she ends up being a D&D character she will actually have more, since high-level D&D characters have more bling than a rapper and a pimp tied to a Christmas tree.

---- TECHNICAL ASPECTS ----

This artwork was an opportunity to get better used to Paint Tool Sai, though I also used Photoshop for some things. Having two types of layer, one for lineart and another more appropriate for painting, each with the right tools for each job, helps considerably in Sai.

The tools offered by Sai appear to better approach the experience of painting with various materials compared to Photoshop, though some things are still more practical to do in Photoshop. Also, I just can't seem to get used to Delete rotating the picture instead of, you know, deleting things. Why Sai? Why?

Anyway, in this drawing I tried to combine my usual style of lineart with a more nuanced, soft, blended coloring that I use for my more "realistic" pictures. In general, I really like the result, though there are 3 things I'm not too happy about.
-The gemstone on her forehead: I wanted it to look like the one I have on my Chained One drawing's chest plate, but I couldn't make it work for some reason.

-I wanted to make more clear the individual strands of hair, especially where light illuminated it most strongly, like in my other work Agni Perhaps the drawing is still too small for that, or the hairstyle was not very friendly to it, or the colors I picked, I don't know. I just couldn't quite get where I wanted with it.

- I planned for her headdress to include, falling behind her head, ornaments reminiscent of a phoenix tail's feathers and those diamond-shaped paper things used by Japanese shrine-maidens. A combination of laziness and not managing to make it look like I wanted made me abandon the idea.

Also, the that image of a phoenix in her white dress. I think I managed to give the idea of it following the curves of the fabric (thus distorting the image), but I think I could have done better. Maybe next time.

Overall, though, I'm pretty happy with this one.