Progress, with color

You can see my first post about how some ZIA tiles progressed as I worked on them here.

I had again started four tiles with gray washes. Here they are. You guessed right if you think the top left is likely to be houses! Can you see a shape that looks like a bird in the top right tile?

I had just watched a video demo of some paint pens I have and I wanted to try using them for making washes, so I added color to three of the tiles. Not sure why I didn't do the fourth; I think it looked as if it should be simply black and white.

At this point I'm thinking:

• Houses: I like the houses but I'm not sure how to develop the background.
• Bird: The phoenix is kind of cool but too gray. I might tilt it 45 degrees left so it sits diagonally and the bird is going straight up.
• Tree: The oak tree trunk I like. The border is adapted from Michele Beauchamp's tangle Oke but I'm not happy with it yet. The tree is pretty darn bright but I'm thinking of tangling it in brown.
• B&W: The grid border doesn't go with the trees and clouds I see in the center. I'm not sure where this will go.

After more work:

At this point I'm thinking:

• Houses: The background is coming along nicely. The buildings really need shading.
• Bird: I like where this is going but some of the flames are too gray. I think the bird is too upright but the flames are better this way. I like the white on the bird's tail and wings.
• Tree: I like the border much better with the orange and yellow wash I added. The blue sky is good too. It's become some sort of hybrid tree with quite a variety of leaf shapes!
• B&W: Nope. Not inspired by this one. Yet. We'll see.

Aaand... finished:

Finishing, fine-tuning, and what I'm thinking:

• "Night in the Old Neighborhood" -I added many small details: pen lines, colored pencil, white ink. This will be mounted and painted.
• "Peace Phoenix" - I prefer it at this angle after all. I whitened the bird and un-grayed some flames using colored pencil. This will be mounted and painted.
• "Splendiferous" - I love the leaves! And the border. The blue was an excellent idea. This will be mounted and painted.
• If I were going to give this a title I think it would be "Space Junk". I decided it wasn't going to be anyThing so I went with non-representational and just drew what I felt like. Success is in the trying.