Found An Amazing One For Yall: The Latin Word For Binder, As In A Thing That Binds Or Holds Something

Found an amazing one for y’all: the Latin word for “binder”, as in “a thing that binds or holds something in place”, is

Alligator

(Etymologically unrelated to the animal, whose name is an English corruption of Spanish “el lagarto” meaning “the lizard”)

Okay, these look like fun (and like they would be Very Texture...)

CHAOS DICE! 😈 To spice up your gaming table. Link in bio

obsessed with the way my robotics team lead talks

she’s reinventing hieroglyphics

The aromatic Narngreg

My response to this week’s BestiaryPosting challenge, from @maniculum

Initial pencil sketch, lines in dark sepia ink using sailor fude nib fountain pen, and Derwent inktense yellow paint with a water brush.

I'm getting more confident with my linework (one of the reasons I'm using pen and ink is to encourage myself to go for it, and any mistakes I'll suck up and learn from), but it's still tricky keeping the fine lines where I want to focus on detail. I'll take a look through my pens and see if I've got anything with a (normal) fine nib and see if that's any good for drawing with (much as I've loved working with dip pens in the past, the convenience of fountain pens is very compelling!)

Reasoning below the cut!

There is an animal called the Narngreg, multi-coloured, very beautiful and extremely gentle. Physiologus says of it, that it has only the dragon as an enemy. When it has fed and is full, it hides in its den and sleeps. After three days it awakes from its sleep and gives a great roar, and from its mouth comes a very sweet odour, as if it were a mixture of every perfume.

This creature is extremely gentle, and has very sweet breath, so my first interpretation was that it was definitely not a carnivore (cats and dogs not being particularly known for their fragrant breath!). However, as mentioned in the last paragraph, this creature has very prominent claws, so how to interpret this?

One of the options was to consider that it might be insectivorous, or even mellivorous; I liked the idea of it having honey as at least a large part of the diet, as I could have interpreted the 'sweet' breath more literally! Bears and mustelids such as honey badgers (no spots, but fits the black and white colouration mentioned below) both use their claws to tear into bee nests, and anteaters, pangolins, aardvarks, etc all have impressive weaponry.

In the end, I actually took my main influence from a couple of extinct animals; chalicotheres and ground sloths such as Megatherium. This informed the general anatomy (including the longer forelimbs, barrel chest and even the shape of its head.

Since we know it is Very Beautiful (Very Powerful) I wanted to jazz it up a little, hence the absolutely gorgeous mane, cool beard, and tuft on the tail. The dentition (prominent caniniform teeth) is actually taken directly from (arboreal) sloths...

As cute as it would have been to draw a Narngreg all curled up and sleepy, it made more sense to draw it having just woken, and giving its 'great roar' - the lines could be indicating the sound, it's sweet breath, or both!

When other animals hear its voice, they follow wherever it goes, because of the sweetness of its scent. Only the dragon, hearing its voice, is seized by fear and flees into the caves beneath the earth. There, unable to bear the scent, it grows numbed within itself and remains motionless, as if dead.

I took a look at some of the other artists interpretations of this challenge after I'd drawn my piece, but before writing the description, and it seems like I've undergone a similar thought process to @coolest-capybara (though I feel like she's gone all in on the idea, whereas I only referenced it), by having some of the creatures from previous challenges appear. I skipped the birds (more down to time and how best to respresent them, because most of them were on the small side), but we can see a Kraegrat scenting the air, and further back an elephant from the Choglaem illustration. Raising its titanic head from behind a wall of trees, we can also see the Choglaem itself, though it doesn't seem very impressed; time to 'flee into the caves beneath the earth' methinks...

The Narngreg is a beast dabbed all over with very small circular spots, so that it is distinguished by its black and white colouring with eye-shaped circles of yellow.

I suppose three colours (black, white and yellow) counts as multicoloured... 🤔 I wanted to go for a more straightforward line drawing with this one, so didn't consider the colouration too much, but since the yellow markings were such a key part of the description, I wanted to include them. I went with more stylised eye shapes, rather than going with actual circles, mostly because it seemed a little more naturalistic this way (and more fun!). I tried to get the markings to wrap realistically around the body, but I'm not sure how successful I was there. On the baby, I opted for yellow dots rather than the adult markings, to link it to the adult but show a clear difference between them.

The female gives birth once only, for a good reason. Once the three young have grown within their mother’s body until they are strong enough to be born, they hate having to stay there any longer. They scratch with their claws at the womb which is laden with its fruit, as if it prevented them from being born. The mother, overcome with pain, pushes them out and after this the seed which penetrates into the scarred and distorted womb does not take root, but flows out again unused. Pliny says that animals with sharp claws cannot bear children often because they are badly wounded internally by the movement of their young.

I think that's a pretty big assumption Pliny old chap, any observation to back that up? 😜 Obviously the main thing we learn here is that these creatures (inlcuding newborns) have prominent claws, with (as previously mentioned) heavily influence a lot of the other design decisions. Thinking about it, I probably should have drawn three babies rather than just the one! (The rule of threes seems very prevalent amongst bestiary authors!). The baby is rolling around and having fun, since it doesn't need to worry because every creature (bar dragons) loves it!

As I'm sure @maniculum has already spotted, we also have some typical African (specifically, Egyptian) flora scattered around too... Those trees are fun and I'm definitely going to use them in the future!

I saw a post saying that Boromir looked too scruffy in FotR for a Captain of Gondor, and I tried to move on, but I’m hyperfixating. Has anyone ever solo backpacked? I have. By the end, not only did I look like shit, but by day two I was talking to myself. On another occasion I did fourteen days’ backcountry as the lone woman in a group of twelve men, no showers, no deodorant, and brother, by the end of that we were all EXTREMELY feral. You think we looked like heirs to the throne of anywhere? We were thirteen wolverines in ripstop.

My boy Boromir? Spent FOUR MONTHS in the wilderness! Alone! No roads! High floods! His horse died! I’m amazed he showed up to Imladris wearing clothes, let alone with a decent haircut. I’m fully convinced that he left Gondor looking like Richard Sharpe being presented to the Prince Regent in 1813

*electric guitar riff*

And then rocked up to Imladris a hundred ten days later like

Catical illusion/  This kitty is in a bathtub

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