Historical Illustration - Tumblr Posts
This one in particular. It's sheer artistic genius. The awkward positions, the deadpan expressions...
"Quadrille of the future in a room overcharged with an escape of electricity." From "The Willing Servants - A history of electricity in the home by Anthony Byers"
In today's episode of 'things from when I had no computer', some different types of soldiers from the English Civil War.
Researching these turned out to be very hard, there was a lot of conflicting information. For example, would a pikeman have a sword? I found books saying both yes and no. In the end I thought that being in the front line with only a heavy, 3-4 metre spear would practically be suicide, and I couldn't see anyone agreeing to do it unless they also had a close-range weapon.
Anyway, I did my best with the sources I could find, but I won't be surprised if a historian pops up and points out lots of problems!
The last of the non-fiction drawings from when I had computer troubles.
This was really common when I was in primary school - comparisons of clothing styles between puritans and catholic royalists. One thing I noticed though is that they tended to show upper-class royalists, and middle or lower-class puritans, so I drew a standard upper-class royalist pair (although they ended up looking way too much like the actual king and queen...) and tried to find information on what upper-class puritans would wear.
It turns out puritans were very much in favour of the social hierarchy, and upper-class puritans would have worn richer fabrics and embellishments like ribbons and lace edging to visually indicate their social standing. The open-fronted skirt was apparently a more conservative style at the time, because it required less of the more expensive outer fabric.
If you read the scorpions mouthparts as a a pair of 'beaks' (which is how it looked to me initially, assuming that there is some kind of consistent perspective, which on further looking may be a mistake...), it's not a terrible representation of a scorpion's actual mouthparts/chelicerae. I could also feasibly believe it's meant to represent its pincers, but no idea what's going on with the... are those tongues? Antennae? 🤷
Definitely the first bestiary scorpion that I could reasonably guess what it's meant to be, though :D
scorpion in the 'buch der natur' by konrad von megenberg, alsace, c. 1440 (Stuttgart, Landesbibl., Cod. med. et phys. 2° 14, fol. 243v). interesting detail: the german text starts with the typical description of the scorpion as a snake with a pretty woman's face. over this passage, somebody added in latin: "non est ita" = "it's not like that". lmaoo. a paradigm shift. to ME
[Image ID: an arthropod with some odd tripartite mouthparts, a sort of neck raising its head from a beetle-like body, eight legs that end in pincers, a row of nodules along its back, and a fishhook-like tail. It is shown in an outdoor scene that makes it look gigantic.]
(Sorry for the delay on this. I've had deadlines keeping me busy, but they're done now and I'm trying to catch up on various things that fell by the wayside.)
Some remarkable stuff here. I absolutely love someone writing "it's not like that" over the description, and I really have to wonder (not that an answer is likely forthcoming) about the context. On one hand, the idea that someone is just straight-up (correctly) disputing the claim that a scorpion is a serpent with a woman's face is pretty funny. On the other hand, I also like the idea that this comment is meant to be juxtaposed with the illustration: "hey, I'm not sure if you've noticed, but the giant rampaging monster you've drawn here does not have a woman's face. it's not like that."
Also, I know the scale is often not meant to be representative in these illustrations, but wow that's a big scorpion. We're back to prehistoric vibes, but this time our scorpion looks more like an actual dinosaur than any other thing I can think of. I suppose that's just my only referent for an armored creature of that size. It looks like it's a serious challenge for 4-6 mid-level adventurers.
No idea what's going on with those mouthparts, also. They need to be acknowledged, but I don't know what to say about them.
Anyway, points:
Small Scuttling Beaſtie? ½, definitely looks like it scuttles but is not small in the least
Pincers? eight on the ends of its legs rather than as a separate pair of limbs, but sure, ✓
Exoskeleton or Shell? ✓
Visible Stinger? ✓
Limbs? 8
As for vibes, I am enjoying this one. I don't want it to be near me, but it has a certain majesty when observed from a distance. Like this:
Yeah, we're still on the dinosaur comparison. 4 / 5.
And that means that this is officially the Best Scorpion So Far, coming in at a total score of:
8.3 / 10
Our bestiary illustrator was so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should. (They absolutely should.)
