I had this sudden urge.... so I pulled up Inkscape. Some lines later I had this:



Used the calligraphy tool to flesh it out a little. Perspective is way off:



Began using the calligraphy tool to start creating the actual image. The head was first, it it's already optimized in the following image:



The main body is what I am working on, the thing is about half-optimized right now, I am deleting about 80%+ of all nodes; you can probably tell I started with the lower side of the body:



Each image represents a new layer, as you can see I faded the "draft" layers out but kept them for reference. I do want to keep it looking hand-drawn, without looking too jittery (my hands are not too steady, unfortunately).

It's really late at night (4:30 in the morning!) so I won't be able to continue, I just wanted to throw this out unto the forums.

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looking good! Interesting workflow too. Look forward to seeing more.

Awesome, nils!

I'm looking forward to seeing how this progresses.

Thank you, guys, for the kind words.

Optimized - not much of a visible difference; the lines are smoother etc:



Took a swing at the left wing:



Again, the calligraphy tool is my best friend. However, while I like the look of the wing, I'll probably re-do it one more time. I think I should leave each "feather" an individual object, so that I can more easily color them individually and thus give the bird a wilder, more fiery look.

I really like how you've used the calligraphy tool to create a filled area for the wings feathers and then union-ed it and applied a stroke. I know it's a simple and almost obvious idea, but I wouldn't have thought to use it that way.