Lancelot Wrapped

✨ lancelot wrapped ✨

you killed 42 horses!

you went to two masses!

you committed 198 acts of adultery!

you conquered 14 castles!

you exhibited 51 symptoms!

you toppled three kingdoms!

your top artist was my chemical romance!

the reason Michael Caine and Tim Curry are so good in their respective Muppet movies is that Michael Caine treats the Muppets as fellow actors, and Tim Curry treats himself as a fellow Muppet

discuss

The Benign Kraegrat

My response to this week's Bestiaryposting challenge, by @maniculum!

Wow, not a lot to go on this week - hopefully the narrative here is pretty self explanitory :D

Initial pencil sketch, mostly to get the proportions, then lines with a pentel brush pen - that was fun, but very hard to use!

As ever, reasoning below the cut...

"There is an animal called the Kraegrat, which is extremely gentle; its testicles are highly suitable for medicine. Physiologus says of it that, when it knows that a hunter is pursuing it, it bites off its testicles and throws them in the hunter’s face and, taking flight, escapes. But if, once again, another hunter is in pursuit, the Kraegrat rears up and displays its sexual organs. When the hunter sees that it lacks testicles, he leaves it alone." - I bolded the text for emphasis, but that's pretty much all we had to go off. I'm sorry, I couldn't get that image out of my mind, so please have a medieval hunter getting hit in the face with some hurled, severed testicles... (not a sentence I thought I would ever type...)

I tried to do some thinking around what sort of creature the Kraegrat might be; I'm not trying to guess what it's meant to be (that would be against the spirit of the challenge), but rather getting some very rough ideas where to start (particularly since this week's prompt did not give us a lot to work with). All we really had was it was gentle, it could bite (not narrowing it down a lot) and it could rear up on its hind legs to flash prospective hunters (something I missed until after I'd finished the drawing!).

The most gentle beast I can think of is the noble Capybara (which may have come to mind from one of the other participants in this challenge, perhaps?), but I ended up being inspired by vicuna, which have some of the softest wool in the animal kingdom, hence the floofy, shaggy, wooly appearance of the beast.

I also started thinking around what sort of animals might have valuable nether regions... Mustelids have their characteristic anal scent glands, but if we're looking at a gentle creature it would probably need to be (in the medieval mind at least) a herbivore... And this is the point when I realised I knew exactly what this creature was supposed to be and retreated to my previous idea...!

If you could have one Shakespeare play done by the Muppets what would it be?

obviously a Midsummer Night's Dream, can you imagine? Kermit as Oberon, Miss Piggy as Titania, the non-fae characters are played by the only humans, when Bottom is transformed he physically becomes a muppet, Puck is naturally Gonzo with bonus Rizzo

The resolute Ilyecham

My response to this weeks Bestiary Posting challenge, from The Maniculum!

I've been vaguelly considering how to tackle this one all week (and trying to avoid seeing others' interpretations as much as possible). Again, we have a lot of behaviours, but nothing in terms of a physical description... Did the author just thing 'everyone knows what birds look like', was this just a bird that the reader was expected to be familiar with, or were they all like 'I'm not describing yet another bird... :p'?

It's a pen and ink drawing (dark sepia ink, and a sailor fude nib) over a pencil sketch; the fude nib is interesting as it's meant to give the impression of using a brush - the nib is bent to allow transition from thin to thick lines - I've got a lot of practice to go to get that transition right though (I'm tempted to try an actual brush pen for next week's challenge...)!

This time, I actually used some references! Well, I briefly glanced at some, anyhow... I feel like it has made a difference, particularly in terms of the anatomy (though there are several things I'd go back and change if I was doing this over), but I still need to work a bit more on consistency (and maybe not tackling any too-awkward perpectives...!). I had a lot of fun with this one :)

Reasoning below the cut...

"The Ilyecham is a bird armed rather with spirit than with claws, having great courage in its small body. [Etymology redacted]. For it greedily seizes other birds. [Etymology redacted.]" - So, carnivorous bird, emphasis away from it's claws... I had to double check this, but falcons kill prey with their beak (a sharply projecting 'tomial tooth' on their upper beak), whereas hawks use their claws. I tried to show this, but it's such a small details it might not be obvious. Did you know that falcons are more closely related to passerines (perching birds, like sparrows) than they are to hawks/eagles? I always find that absolutely mind-blowing :)

"It is said that the Ilyecham is lacking in parental care towards its young, for when it sees that they are able and trying to fly, it does not feed them but beats them with its wings, throws them from the nest and forces them from a tender age to catch prey for themselves lest, when they are fully grown, they should become lazy." - Hey, chalk up another one to that old adage 'birds are jerks'... I'm starting to think that bestiary authors were not the biggest birb fans... In the top right of the picture, we have a mama ilyecham pushing the baby out of the nest with her wing. Time to find your own way in the world, baby bird! I tried to distinguish the younger bird's plumage with a different pattern (spotted/dotted); the adult plumage was inspired by goshawks (I know, hawk vs falcon), more because it would show up as distinctive in black and white than any other reason.

As an aside, I really struggled with how to draw a slightly stylised bird nest!

"It takes care lest in their childhood they grow idle, or are given up to pleasure, or grow weak from inactivity, or learn to expect food rather than to seek it for themselves, or abandon their natural vigour. Ilyechams stop bothering to feed their young in order to make them bold enough to seize food for themselves." - Hang on, this is going to be some kind of inspirational virtuous animal thing, isn't is... :p I can imagine some medieval scribe writing 'and so, the ilyecham represents the cardinal virtue of fortitude' or something...

"It is the custom of Ilyechams in the wild to spread their wings when the south wind blows, so that their limbs are warmed by the wind to release their old feathers. When there is no wind, they create a breeze by spreading their wings to face the rays of the sun and beating them; and thus, as the pores of their body open, either their old plumage falls out, or new feathers grow in." - In the top left, we have an ilyecham spreading its wings, facing towards the sun, and doing just that! The feathers blowing away were fun to draw!