May I Suggest The Humble Eurasian Kingfisher?

May I suggest the humble Eurasian Kingfisher?

Absolutely! I've always had a soft-spot for these because we dress the same way.

Hey its me Posting some art again. Tho its Not OC related. Also Not my best work but whatever.

I ACTUALLY wanted to do a scene background, with like a bookshelf with jars and stuff and a window with the moon shining through. Buuuuut since i hate doing BG my Motivation left me... so i just did the simple color BG and called it a day lol.

I mean... if you dont like doing it... dont do it am i right?

Anyways this was for a prompt from a discord Server. The prompt was "your pet as a witches familiar"

I dont have a pet but i am a zookeeper. So next best thing i guess 🤣

The bird is a vulture Guinea fowl (or at least i think thats the english name) or Acryllium vulturinum. And his name is Gregory.

For anyone who wants to know what the bird actually looks like:

This is the photo I used as a reference (i took it myself)

Very beautiful bird that needs more recognition <3

The Mellifluous Gibemlut

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

Pencil sketch, then lines in Pentel brush pen.

Thought process under the cut…

"The Gibemlut, [redacted], gets its name from the act of castration. For alone among other birds its testicles are removed, and the ancients called castrated men [redacted]."

Okay, so strong start here… Not quite sure where they're going with this, maybe there's some kind of reference to the higher singing vocal range of a castrato? Given that birds have internal testicles, that's the only thing I can think of which would make the author zero in on why exactly this specific bird and not the others is missing theirs. Alternatively, maybe there's some kind of weird religious metaphor that I'm blissfully unaware of…?

Wasn't quite sure how to represent this, I considered showing a bit of a concave shape to the bird's undercarriage, but ended up leaving this to the author's imagination…

"People say that the Gibemlut’s limbs, if mixed with liquid gold, are consumed by it. The calling of the Gibemlut at night is a pleasant sound, and not only pleasant but useful; like a good partner, the Gibemlut wakes you when are asleep, encourages you if you are worried, comforts you if you are on the road, marking with its melodious call the progress of the night. [It goes on like this, soon transitions into a digression on the symbolism of the Gibemlut’s call, and then continues on that theme for multiple pages.]"

For starters, I suspect that if you pour molten gold on the limbs of any small creature, they're just going to burn up… An early thought about what to draw was al alchemists lab, but I ended up depicting the Gibemlut in its natural habitat rather than dismembered in a laboratory for a bunch of obvious reasons.

So, we have a nocturnal bird, hence the drab, camouflaged plumage (based loosely on that of the European nightjar), and a very large eye for seeing better at night. We have a shortish beak that can open wide, all the better for snapping up nocturnal bugs and, of course, singing! I considered adding some whiskers, but I'm not confident about drawing fine lines with the brush pen yet!

Obviously we have a night time scene, and I figured I'd include a stave to represent the Gibemlut's music. I picked the notes by taking this creature's name, and removing the letters that don't appear in an octave scale… I went down quite a rabbit hole of musical notation, but rather than learning how to represent something completely new to me (such as neume, the basic elements of a lot of european notation prior to the invention of the musical stave) I figured I'd go for something easier and more immediately understandable...

In the background we can see a pilgrim (badges on her hat and hanging from her pilgrim's staff) being comforted, encouraged, as well as kept alert, as she listens to the delicate song of the Gibemlut as she walks…

Well, that was unexpected... 🤔

I suppose that some of it makes sense... Having a careful look at my copy of MS Bodley 764, it states "The cock gets its name because it is sometimes castrated" (translation by Richard Barber).

Having done a little digging, the only possible reason I can think of for this is a (theoretical) like between Gallus (latin for rooster/cockerel) and the Sumerian priests of Inanna known as Gala who it seems could be either sex, but were characterised by singing lamentations (typically being a female profession) which were sung in a particular dialect meant to represent the voice of female deities (source: Wikipedia, ymmv). Seems like a bit of a stretch, but perhaps there's a game of telephone going on with that half-remembered reference too?

Bestiaryposting Results: Gibemlut

All right, so we've got another bird, let's see what we're doing with it. Preliminaries, though:

If you don't know what this is about, check https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting.

The art in this post is based on a bestiary entry which can be found here:

If you want to participate yourself for next week, that entry can be found here:

Now, art below the cut.

@silverhart-makes-art (link to post here) notes the lack of physical description in the entry, and has based their interpretation on the American Robin. For why, and other details about the design, see the linked post. I rather like the speckles, and I think the large eyes make it pretty cute.

@cheapsweets (link to post here) observes the kind of nonsensical parts of the entry and then provides us with this very nice rendering of a singing bird. I think the pilgrim in the background is a nice touch. I recommend checking the linked post for further discussion. (Also thank you for providing alt text.)

@pomrania (link to post here) also makes note of the nonsensical parts of the entry at some length in their progress thread -- worth checking out if you're curious -- and landed on this design. I think it's a pretty solid not-quite-a-chicken.

@strixcattus (link to post here) is the third to make note of the way this entry doesn't make sense. She has drawn this songbird with a very nice color palette and a facial expression that I'm not sure what to make of. As always, see the linked post for a modern naturalistic description of the creature in question.

@wendievergreen (link to post here) joins the chorus of "how is something with no external testicles being castrated", and has also drawn some excellent birds. I continue to really enjoy their art style -- I like how the birds here almost look like they're wearing masks. (Also, thank you for including alt text.)

@coolest-capybara (link to post here) has similar concerns to our other artists, as well as a different, more disturbing interpretation of the business with the liquid gold. (That sentence is grammatically ambiguous, now that I think of it.) As always, their artistic contribution is fantastically stylized, and predictably, I enjoy the tree. The potoo influence, I think, also really works here.

Can't go to the Aberdeen Bestiary this time -- this is another entry where the picture has been cut out -- so here's the version from the Ashmole Bestiary.

Yep, that's pretty clearly a rooster.

Well, it's blue, but I don't know that there are no blue roosters.

Honestly I don't have a lot to add here, except that it's fascinating and kind of sweet that the medieval author thought of the calls of chickens that way.

This also puts a whole new spin on the castration thing -- do any chicken owners out there have some idea why people would describe roosters as being castrated? Do people castrate them? How?

(I continue to have no explanation for the gold thing.)

The Mellivorous Olkorwae

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

Pencil sketch, then lines in Pentel brush pen. It has been a very busy week, and I am very tired, but happy I'm still able to get something out before the deadline.

Thought process under the cut…

"It is said that they produce a shapeless fetus and that a piece of flesh is born. The mother forms the parts of the body by licking it. The shapelessness of the child is the result of its premature birth. It is born only thirty days after conception, and as a result of this rapid fertility it is born unformed. The Olkorwae’s head is not strong; its greatest strength lies in its arms and loins; for this reason Olkorwaes sometimes stand upright."

Okay, I'm 90% sure I know what this creature is meant to be, but we'll. We know that this beast has powerful forelimbs, good core strength, is able to stand upright but seems like this is not its default position, and nothing massively special/strong with its head/jaws. With that in mind, I'm imagining a greature with longer forelimbs than hindlimbs; more powerful forelimbs this way, plus a lower center of gravity making rearing up and walking bipedally more viable.

We also have some interesting info about baby Olkorwaes, which is repeated further on, so that's where I'll deal with those thoughts...

"Olkorwaes do not neglect the business of healing themselves. If they are afflicted by a mortal blow and injured by wounds, they know how to heal themselves. They expose their sores to the herb called mullein — flomus, the Greeks call it — and are healed by its touch alone. When sick, the Olkorwae eats ants. The Olkorwaes of Numidia stand out from other Olkorwaes by virtue of the shagginess of their hair."

No time for going down weird rabbit holes researching random herbs this week unfortunately. However, assume that these Olkorwaes are from Numidia (Algeria, Tunisia and Libya) from the shagginess of their coats. Also, hairy = beaʃt.

"Olkorwaes are bred in the same way, wherever they come from. They do not mate like other quadrupeds but embrace each other when they copulate, just like the couplings of humans. Winter arouses their desire. The males respect the pregnant females, and honour them by leaving them alone; although they may share the same lair at the time of birth, they lie separated by a trench."

Figured I'd represent a scene of a pair of Olkorwaes in their den, complete with trench being dug! We have some wide, powerful paws on its forelimbs, along with some impressive claws, all the better for digging with!

"Among Olkorwaes the time of gestation is accelerated. Indeed, the thirtieth day sees the womb free of the child. As a result of this rapid fertility, the babies are created without form. The females produce tiny lumps of flesh, white in colour, with no eyes. These they shape gradually, holding them meanwhile to their breasts so that the babies are warmed by the constant embrace and draw out the spirit of life. During this time Olkorwaes eat no food at all in the first fortnight; the males fall so deeply asleep that they cannot be aroused even if they are wounded, and the females, after they have given birth, hide for three months. Soon after, when they emerge into the open, they are so unused to the light that you would think they had been blinded."

So, the babies are born small and almost shapeless. I think it's obvious to all what this creatue is; a marsupial!

Imagine that the mother Olkorwae has a pouch - it's just not visible due to how she is curled up around her babies!

I did a little looking into extinct australian megafauna, and came across the Thylacoleo, or marsupial lion, which was a pretty good match for what I was going for, so I ended up taking a lot of inspiration from this, as well as a little from other extinct beasties such as Procoptodon.

I was a little tempted to draw the babies as Dittos (the pokemon) but no eyes when they are born!

"They attack beehives and try hard to get honeycombs. There is nothing they seize more eagerly than honey. If they eat the fruit of the mandrake they die. But they prevent the misfortune from turning into disaster and eat ants to regain their health. If they attack bulls, they know the parts to threaten the most, and will not go for any part except the horns or nose: the nose, because the the pain is sharper in the more tender place."

There would have been some cool stuff to represent here, but alas, neither the time or energy for anything too fancy this week - I look forward to seeing what others do with this description!

Unmute !