Maniculum Miscellaneouslizards - Tumblr Posts

cheapsweets
4 months ago

A Mélange of Miscelaneous Lizards

A pencil sketch of three lizards on a wall. The top one has a short thick tail, delicate limbs and bulbous eyes; it stares directly towards the viewer. The second emerges from a crack in the wall, peering round the corner towards the sun. It is sleek and pointed. The third is the largest, a monitor lizard with star-shaped osteoderms on its back crawling down the wall and gaping in a threat display at a strange creature with a forked tail, two legs, pointed ears and small wings.

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

Pencil sketch only this week, due to various reasons I didn't get the opportunity to ink it (this was finally going to be my second attempt at Mike Mignola's style), maybe I will repost later if I have the time and energy to tackle the inking at a later date, but I wanted to get what I did have up.

Original description and a couple of brief notes below the cut;

Nglushogog

The Nglushogog is so called because it has the face of a frog.

Lots of inspiration from leopard geckos, particularly in terms of its tail.

Hrutdearya

The Hrutdearya is a lizard which goes blind when it grows old; it enters a crack in a wall and, looking toward the east, it bends its gaze on the rising sun and regains its sight.

A bit of inspiration from skinks and anoles here.

Rukhgarukh

The Rukhgarukh gets its name from its colouring. For it is adorned on its back with shining spots like stars. Ovid says of it: ‘Its name fits its colour; it is starred on the body with spots of various colours’ (see Ovid, Metamorphoses, 5, 461). It is said to be so hostile to scorpions, that the sight of it paralyses them with fear.

As this is the most aggressive and actively described of the three, I went for something with a good gape display, in this case a monitor lizard, with star-shaped osteoderms on its back. It's menacing another strange creature that might be familiar...

Tags :
maniculum bestiaryposting bestiaryposting my art wip Nglushogog hrutdearya Rukhgarukh maniculum miscellaneouslizards art challenge
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cheapsweets
4 months ago

That is an excellent lizard! A bit jealous, I've only ever seen one lizard in the UK (still yet to see a slow worm 🙁 ), pretty sure that was on a beach near Lyme Regis, many many years ago...

Love the hrutdearya peeking out at the sun from its home!

Bestiaryposting Results: Miscellaneous Lizards

Slightly delayed, sorry. What happened there is I drafted it, looked at the time, thought I should give it a couple more hours to make sure everyone had time to post their stuff, and then... forgot to go back. Anyway.

Our second week of miscellany, where we have a bunch of the critters who didn't get their own entry grouped together. This one is the shortest, with just three lizards to look at.

If none of that made sense to you, you can find answers at https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting.

To see the entries for the three lizards in question, click here:

maniculum.tumblr.com
Bestiaryposting -- Miscellaneous Lizards
As a reminder, all previous entries in this series can be found at https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting . Another reminder: as menti

And to see next week's miscellany so you can participate, click here:

maniculum.tumblr.com
Bestiary -- Miscellaneous Snakes
As a reminder, all previous entries in this series can be found at https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting . Another reminder: as menti

Without further ado -- and crossing our fingers that the tagging system is cooperating this time -- here are some lizards below the cut.

A digital drawing stylized like a medieval book illustration with a blue border and a gold foil background. Four animals are drawn from above. On the top left, a red scorpion looks towards the centre, tail raised. On the bottom left, a warty green lizard with webbed feet walks towards the bottom of the frame. On the bottom right, a spiky brown lizard is curled up on itself, sleeping. In the center, a big blue lizard with a pattern of stars all along its body turns towards the red scorpion.

@coolest-capybara (link to post here) has drawn all three, along with a bonus... well, the post says it's a scorpion, but I thought those looked different... anyway. The smaller lizards are darling, and I think the celestial look of the Rukhgarukh came off really well here. (And thank you for providing alt text.)

A pencil drawing of three lizards. In the top left is the Nglushogog, which does indeed have a face like a frog, complete with throat pouch. It is also equipped with noticeable claws, small spikes over its eyes, and fin-like protrusions on the joints of its front legs, giving it a draconic appearance. In the top right is the Hrutdearya, which resembles a tuatara; its head is turned so that we can see its right eye is solid white and presumably blind, while the parietal eye on top of its head is highly visible and presumably functional. At the bottom is the Rukhgarukh, seen from above, which resembles a gecko with a fat tail and eight stars on its back -- six in a double row along its spine, one on the head, and one at the base of the tail.

@silverhart-makes-art (link to post here) has done some quality pencil sketches that also led me to learn cool things about the tuatara. I think the Nglushogog turned out particularly well here; the draconic vibe is interesting.

A pencil sketch of three lizards on a wall. The top one has a short thick tail, delicate limbs and bulbous eyes; it stares directly towards the viewer. The second emerges from a crack in the wall, peering round the corner towards the sun. It is sleek and pointed. The third is the largest, a monitor lizard with star-shaped osteoderms on its back crawling down the wall and gaping in a threat display at a strange creature with a forked tail, two legs, pointed ears and small wings.

@cheapsweets (link to post here) has done a pencil sketch of the three -- I like the Nglushogog again here. The whole "lizard with the face of a frog" thing is honestly turning out more interesting than I expected. And hey -- in the bottom right -- what is that? Looks a bit like a scorpion to me.

A drawing of three lizards and some decorative lettering. At the top is the Nglushogog, a brown lizard with a blunt tail, feet that look like they're adapted to digging, round green eyes, and a frog-like face. Below it is text reading, "The lizard is called". Below that is the Hrutdearya, a pinkish lizard, thin and delicate-looking, with red eyes and a long tail. Below it is text reading, "a kind of reptile". Below that is the Rukhgarukh, a brown-and-black lizard covered in spines, with a blunt head and yellow eyes. It has speckles over its black back & tail. Below it is text reading, "because it has arms."

@strixcattus (link to post here) has drawn some interestingly varied lizards, and included some nice lettering for us. I think this is the first one where the Hrutdearya really stands out to me -- it just looks so small & cute. As always, I recommend reading the linked post for Strixcattus's work, as she writes naturalistic descriptions to go with the illustrations -- I think the one for the Nglushogog is clever, and also hits pretty close to the mark in one particular way... we'll get to that.

Photograph of a colorful drawing of three fictional lizards and one scorpion. The drawing is on a piece of light beige paper. The paper is being held under a tree. It is mostly in shade with some areas of dappled sunlight. While the shade tints the paper grey-blue, the colors and details of the drawing are still visible. At the top of the page is a bright green lizard with a paler green belly and a black stripe down its side. It has a flat, chubby body, and a thick, stubby tail. Below, the second lizard's body has copper-red, dark blue-black, and yellow-gold stripes. Its tail is deep blue and its belly is bright blue. It's in an upward position, as if it is clinging to a wall. It is looking to the right, facing a stylized sun. Its body is rounder and its head smaller than the top lizard. Its tail is very long, and stretches diagonally left down most of the page. The bottom lizard has a similar build to the middle lizard. Its back is deep purple with metallic dots and stars. Its belly is black. It is facing left and staring down a scorpion. The scorpian is mostly copper-red with golden legs. It is highlighted in bright yellow and pink. There is a sparkly white exclamation point over the scorpion. Around the animal figures are patches and lines of yellow, red, and purple. These colors serve as shadows and suggest the animals environments.

@wendievergreen (link to post here) has drawn some very realistic-looking lizards by doing mashups between various Oregonian species. All extremely solid, in my opinion; I especially like the coloring on the Rukhgarukh. Also the exclamation point over the "scorpion" is a nice touch. More details in the linked post (and thank you for providing alt text).

So! Aberdeen bestiary.

A medieval manuscript illustration with a red-and-blue decorative border and a gold-foil background. It shows a view from above of a quadrupedal creature with a thick reddish body that gradually narrows at each end into a long tail and a serpentine neck. It has four blue lizard-like feet and a blue, generically mammalian head (possibly feline)?

This is actually just the illustration for Lizard. Which... I guess? Come on, monks, surely you've seen a lizard, what are you doing here? Why does it have that face?

Nglushogog

The Nglushogog gets no illustration of its own -- that single sentence describing it occurs in the intro to the brief "lizards" section. However, I can tell you that it is the botruca or botrax. (The entry uses both -- it mentions the "botrax" in a list of lizards at the start, then notes that the "botruca" is called that because it has a face like a frog.) This is not particularly helpful, however, because that is not a real lizard. The Medieval Bestiary website provides a little more information on it at this link here, and suggests that this was actually originally just the entry for a frog (or toad). This theory is supported by the fact that, according to the Aberdeen Bestiary, it is named after the Greek word for "frog". Which... close enough; Wiktionary tells me that Ancient Greek* for "frog" is batrakhos, and that seems plausible to me because we have the English word batrachian. (Even though Tumblr thinks we don't and has red-underlined it.) So probably somehow** "frog" turned into "frog-like lizard that has the same name as a frog".

*I'm specifically using the Ancient Greek forms here because I'm pretty sure those are the ones our authors would be most familiar with unless they happened to be writing from the Eastern Mediterranean.

** Looks like it might have been Isidore of Seville's fault, which... shocker. Or at least, he's the earliest source bestiary.ca has listed for that entry, and we know that he's where the Aberdeen Bestiary gets its etymological trivia, so it seems likely that he did that.

Hrutdearya

A medieval manuscript illustration that is very long horizontally but very short vertically, with a blue border and gold-foil background. It shows a creature with a long, serpentine purple body and two stubby legs. It has a green head that would almost pass as a lizard if it weren't for the pointy canine ears. It is standing in a tiny structure that consists entirely of a green archway, a triangular purple roof, and a decorative sphere on the roof's point. The structure is just big enough for it to stand upright with its long neck and tail trailing far out at both ends. A little bit in front of its face is a stylized orange sun.

This is a very interestingly-stylized interpretation of "looking through a crack in a wall". Who built that little archway, and does it actually help with the sun-gazing?

Anyhow, this is the saura, which... well, I can't say it's not a real lizard, but it's also clearly the result of a misunderstanding. As we all know from (I assume) reading about dinosaurs, saura is just Ancient Greek for "lizard". So probably this was originally supposed to describe something all lizards do, and this bestiary turned it into a specific type of lizard.

Rukhgarukh

Another long horizontal medieval illustration, this one with a red border. It shows a snake with a distinctly canine-looking head. It's colored a dark blue with a row of white stars going from its head to its tail.

This one, as you can tell by it looking absolutely nothing like it, is a newt. It has stars on it because the Latin for "newt" is apparently stellio. It's possible that the artist did not realize it was supposed to be a newt. It's possible it wasn't supposed to be a newt originally, but I don't have time to look into that right now.

Anyway, that's lizards. Tune in next week for some snakes, a category to which the above legless critter apparently does not belong.

Tags :
Awesome art bestiaryposting bestiary maniculum bestiaryposting lizards maniculum miscellaneouslizards Nglushogog hrutdearya Rukhgarukh
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