Dirubael - Tumblr Posts
The agonistic Dirubael
My response to this week’s BestiaryPosting challenge, from @maniculum
Pencil sketch, then lines in Pentel brush pen. Trying something a little different again, trying to work out the best way to draw fur with a thick pen. I feel like I still don't have the level of control I'd like with the brush pen (in terms of getting the lines the right thickness), but it's still fun to use.
Reasoning below the cut…
"There is an animal called the Dirubael. It is black, as big as a horse, with the tail of an elephant, the jaws of a boar and unusually long horns, adjustable to any movement the animal might make. For they are not fixed but move as the needs of fighting require; the Dirubael advances one of them as it fights, folding the other back, so that if the tip of the first is damaged by a blow, it is replaced by the point of the second."
Didn't have a lot of time this week, so a relatively quick sketch. All the references make me think this is some manner of ungulate, probably related to pigs given that is the most distinctive thing mentioned, so that is where we ended up.
The head is distinctly based off of wild boars (with a bit of influence from prehistoric relatives, of which more below), same with the body, but given that we know it is as big as a horse, I assumed that it had a similar kind of profile, so we have some longer, more gracile legs (though still covered in thick fur).
Now, there were actually prehistoric relatives of pigs that had horns... namely Kubanochoerus sp. It doesn't quite work with the description we have been given (namely mobile horns, and multiples of them) but still pretty cool. I also took some inflience from the extinct giant warthog Metridiochoerus.
The horns... I couldn't think of any clever ways to make this work, so I assumed there was thick muscle around the base of each of the horns, which allows a degree of movement. I imagine that there might be a slot or nodule in the skull where the horn can brace while facing forwards, and while the other horn is tucked back out of the way.
The tail is taken pretty much directly from elephants; I had a image in my head of what I expected them to look like (mostly like a naked cow tail), but on doing a little research it ended up quite different. They are actually quite blunt at the end, and the hair tends to be on the left and right edges which normally ends up with a distinct tuft on either side of the end, rather than a fluffy tip to the tail. Elephant tails are also a lot longer than I imagine them to be!