Ilyecham - Tumblr Posts

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!

Another awesome crop of Ilyecham hawk illustrations, again in a wide range of styles and interpretations; I love every single one of these, but I don't think I'm ever going to be able to clear the interpretation from @mobileleprechaun from my brain... :D

It amuses me intensely that the only part of the behaviour of this critter that doesn't have a symbolic interpretation is kicking the babies out of the nest to fend for themselves... Looks like (so far at least) medieval birds are jerks...

I also checked it out, and it's only since around 2008 that Falconiformes were separated out from other birds of prey in terms of classification (due to comparative genome analysis), so I think we can forgive the medieval scholars for missing that one ;)

As an aside, the reason I haven't followed these awesome artists yet is because I only tend to be able to get drawing towards the end of the time period we've got, and I'm still trying to avoid being influenced too much by other interpretations (not that trying to avoid the artists/tags always works - thanks tumblr... :p). I'm trying to check folks tumblrs out in that golden moment between posting up my art and when the next prompt comes out :D

Bestiaryposting Results: Ilyecham

Presenting the results for the Ilyecham -- a name which continues to look wrong in Tumblr's sans-serif font. That's:

Ilyecham

There we go. As usual, if you're not sure what this is about, you may find an explanation at https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting . The text from which the artists are working is here:

I saw one post saying something along the lines of "if these things are going to keep being birds, I'm going to have to learn more about bird-drawing." I regret to tell you that the Aberdeen Bestiary has a whole section on birds, so they are indeed going to keep coming up. They make up, like, a third of the entries I have queued. Sorry. Or, if you wanted motivation to practice your avian drawing skills, you're welcome.

Also, sorry this post is a couple hours later than usual -- I had Other Obligations this evening.

Anyway, here's the art, in roughly chronological order as per usual.

@embervoices (link to post here) has drawn both a colorful adult and a less-colorful juvenile, and moreover provides us with a quick vocabulary lesson, which I always enjoy because I'm a language nerd. (They also wrote their own image description -- thank you for that, saves me some time.) I absolutely love that the Ilyecham "greedily seizing larger birds" is here represented by a hatchling aggressively going after a "bewildered goose". The linked post includes some notes on design decisions also.

@miapcain (link to post here) has done another beautifully stylized picture, showing multiple Ilyechams and their aggressive behavior. I love the style of course, and I also like that these have an almost sandpiper-like body plan with long beaks, which they apparently use to stab other birds -- or at least I think that's what the one in the bottom right is doing, which I think is pretty cool. The blue heads are a nice visual touch also, I think. The kind of tiled geometric background feels very period-appropriate, exactly the sort of thing you'd see in a particularly richly-illuminated manuscript.

@sweetlyfez (link to post here) notes that there aren't many visual details in the description, so she decided to draw a regular bird of prey and then add a wizard hat to indicate that it is armed with spirit, which I love. I actually laughed out loud when I saw her explanation of why the hat. Excellent choices, no notes. Also I think this is a pretty good bird drawing on its own merits, hat aside.

I continue to enjoy @rautavaara's drawing style (link to post here). I really like the way the rays of the sun are drawn here, specifically. Their Ilyecham is molting in an extremely dramatic fashion, missing whole clumps of feathers, which I think looks quite cool and communicates the idea well. (I worry a little bit about how long it's going to be able to stay in the sky with so many wing feathers missing, but they're apparently quite unpleasant birds, so maybe a rough landing is well deserved.)

@coolest-capybara (link to post here) has drawn us a whole family of Ilyechams. Also in excellent medieval style, as usual -- the stylized drawing are kind of all in a cluster in this post. I like the plants; coolest-capybara is quite good at drawing plants in a way that looks just like the Unidentifiable Medieval Foliage you'd expect in a manuscript. We can see one parent exhibiting its molting behavior, another fighting a much larger bird, and three poor little juveniles walking off looking a bit dejected. Hits all the highlights of the description very well, I think. The linked post includes a brief description and a few close-up details of the image.

@silverhart-makes-art (link to post here) would like to acknowledge that this is "kind of a mess" and "the wings are just gonna look like that", which I think is an example of artists holding themselves to very high standards because this looks very realistically rendered to me and I have no idea what might be wrong with it. That's a damn fine bird drawing right there. The linked post includes a pretty thoughtful explanation of which behaviors in the provided description are reminiscent of which birds, and how silverhart has combined elements of a few different birds to make this one.

@karthara (link to post here) has drawn us what is unmistakably a bird of prey, and briefly explains in the linked post what birds this is inspired by. I think the feather pattern is very interesting, particularly the blue on the head. Something about the way the shape of the pattern interacts with the bird's eye looks very cool. A certain je ne sais quoi, if you will.

@hairycarrot (link to post here) has done a pretty cool-looking sun in the corner of the page. One of the unexpected things I'm enjoying about these is that multiple artists decided to have fun with how to draw the sunshine in which the Ilyecham spreads its wings. Poor little guy falling out of the nest there... buddy I don't think that one is quite ready to fly.

@treesurface (link to post here) shows us an Ilyecham creating a breeze by beating their wings, as described in the entry, which I like. Their Ilyecham is equipped with a dangerous-looking pointed beak for the purpose of fighting larger birds, and the look in its eyes definitely helps with that impression. The linked post provides an explanation of design decisions.

@strixcattus (link to post here) notes that the description provided reminds them of a number of small raptors, but that all of those raptors look kind of alike, so they've given their Ilyecham a striking feather pattern to stand out from the crowd. I really like it, the pattern is excellent. I also like that we're seeing the return of an animal from a previous entry: that thing it's grabbing in its claws is a Holghras chick from a couple weeks ago. (Though I'm slightly torn because I like those little muppets, and the Holghras has enough problems without being attacked by an Ilyecham.) Strixcattus has again provided us with a modernized description of the creature in question, which is amazing as always. If any of y'all enjoy worldbuilding half as much as I do, you owe it to yourself to read these.

@moustawott (link to post here) has drawn us a very small-looking bird here, performing stationary flight to aid in its molting behavior. The feather pattern is very good, in my opinion, and I like how the molted feathers are kind of blowing away behind it. Also an excellently-rendered bird in general.

@pomrania (link to post here) envisions the Ilyecham as looking old and grumpy to fit the vibe of its described behavior -- an early draft of this drawing includes a speech bubble reading "get a job you freeloaders", which I think hits the mark pretty well. (For early drafts and additional commentary on the design, see the linked post) I like the eyebrows, I like the severe color scheme over most of the body paired with the colorful wings, and I like that this is the closest to what I pictured when I read about the Ilyecham, namely this:

(Not that it's an eagle, but you know. Vibes.)

@mobileleprechaun (link to post here) has very clearly depicted a small bird attacking a larger one. They note "heavy Season’s Greason’s inspo" and you know what? I totally see it. I also enjoy the decision to make the larger bird a dodo.

Another cool pen drawing from @cheapsweets (link to post here), who also has some thoughts about how this particular nib works for drawing. Pretty well done birds, I think. I enjoy the one on the right just shoving the juvenile out of the nest, and the stylized sun is also pretty cool. The linked post includes a detailed explanation of the design decisions, and also has some questions about the entry that are probably rhetorical, but I figure I can try and shed some light on a couple of them anyway.

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’?

I think it's a little of all of those, and also that the author tends to be more concerned with the symbolism of the animal than naturalistic description. So if, say, the color of its feathers doesn't have a symbolic meaning attached to it, the author won't bother to tell you. Related to that...

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…

Interestingly, this bird's parenting style is basically the only part of its description that doesn't have any symbolic explication attached. The molting in the south wind gets, like, pages of material though, including the fantastic assertion that it's the south wind because God comes from the south but the Devil comes from the north. Literally, that's what it says:

God, it is said, will come from the south. The Devil from the north; God from the south.

Moving on, let's take a look at the Aberdeen Bestiary illustration.

Honestly, that also kind of looks like Sam the Eagle.

However, this is the entry for the Hawk. Yep. Turns out hawks are inherently opposed to the welfare state, which... actually lines up more than it should with present-day politics.

I don't have much more to add here, because most of my thoughts on hawks boil down to "Tobias was a pretty good character in the Animorphs series".

Pretty sure that's not how wings work, anatomically. But nevertheless. End of post.