Heh, I really like this picture. I love how the steelix turned out, she's looking awesome. And, there's even an interacting background. It's only lots of sand, though ^^

Steelixes and onixes are very rarely seen, they mostly lay digged down deep into the sand of sand-deserts. Far down into the sand, it's rather cold, someting that help to slow down their metabolism (all over life-functions). This is because they need to spare energy; steelix is an predator and there not much food in the deserts.
Steelixes are very sencetive to vibrations in the ground, ones they hear anything, they'll burst up trough the sand and start the hunt. The steelix attack is almost 100% succesfull as their pray have no where to run, and the steelix is utterly fast (however, this also make them continously attack cars as well, thus it's a very bad idea to drive in deserts that may be inhabited by steelix and onix)
For being an underground creature, steelix have excellent sight. Their eyes lays deep into the head and is being surrounded by dark skin, all in order to protect the creature from getting a potential "light-shock" when it rapidily goes over ground in an attack.
To repel sand, their eyes is covered with a thick but transperant skin layer, but they can close their eyes as well, which is though to mostly be a kind of way to clean their eyes. The nose can be closed as well. Steelix hearing is rather bad, tiny holes can still be seen on the side of their head, but the opening are plugged with grown togeter tissue further in.
Because of their low metabolism, steelix doesn't need much air. Steelix only breath with one enlarged lung, while the other one has evolved into a air-sac that they can save fresh air in. Due to this, they only need vistit the surface for air every 24h. However, soon as the steelix is active, they need to enuse a big mass of both energy and air as their bodies are big and sand is a hard medium to move in.
Steelix is coverd with a thick armor, this is to not get crushed by the heavy sand as they are digged down.
The bright color of the shell slightly help to repel heat, and since steelix is not in need of camofulage, there's no need to waste energy to develop colorful armor. The big spikes that is sticking out from their shell is thought to be used to help to detectvibrations, while the fin-like constructions along the back is, together with the all-over shape of the shell, to help to push away the sand when digging.
Um... something. I'm just playing around with some random ideas ^^

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Fan-character is © me ;3