Menagerie of the Unseen
An attempt to collect information about mythical creatures from all over the world
Archive
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Information about wind, should you choose to found a wind clan.
Diety: The Windsinger
Region: The Windswept Plateau
Shrine: The Cloudsong
The Air Dragons of the Windswept Plateau are explorers. They prefer to be joyful and care-free, like the gentle and playful breezes that whisk them to new lands. Of all the dragons, Air Dragons are the most friendly, eager to become a small part of every community they encounter before they eventually and inevitably leave, following the currents in pursuit of a new adventure. Maps, compasses, and feathers are their favored treasure.
(via neondragonart)
Information about fire, should you chose to found a fire clan.
Diety: The Flamecaller
Region: The Ashfall Waste
Shrine: The Great Furnace
The Fire Dragons of the Ashfall Waste are metalworkers. They prefer to be as passionate and intense as the flames they coax. Of all the dragons, Fire Dragons are the most tempermental, and their red-hot fury knows no peers. Rare metal ore, weapons, statues, and tools are their favoured treasure.
(via neondragonart)
Ahhh still working on this hmm. One day I will be happy enough to call it done >_>.
Maybe.
(Source: spiramirabilis)
Felt like smashing together a design for a griffin. Mainly just for a sake of playing with a design.
I love vultures. All sorts of them, but this kind in particular is fun because of the contrast between the bald head and the poofy feather collar. I wanted to smash up a griffin that would enhance the contrast, and scribbled the vulture together with a male lion, but the effect didn’t end up feeling exactly the way I wanted (instead of bald-POOF it went to bald-POOF-meh because of the short fur of the lions hind parts) so I swapped the lion with a long haired housecat. It felt better, and once I tried on tabby siamese coloration I finally got close enough to the feel I wanted.
Fun little experiment.
Some quick study doodles for Simon’s zoo.
First there are some attempts to figure out trolls, the two remaining workers at the zoo. The sturdier one doesn’t have a name yet, though I’m calling him Oula for the time being. I want him to have some sort of Scandinavian or Sami sounding name. (Oula being a valid Lappish male name, but I used to know a dog by the same name.) The horned one is “Arny” (full name Aarni T. Hiidenheimo) who is the “magic man”, person in charge of all kinds of different spells around the zoo that are required to keep some of the animals in check (like preventing the male harpies’ siren song from making all male human visitors into mindless zombies). I’m still pretty awkward with drawing them..
The second thing has study sketches for one of the animals in the zoo. They have a lone male hippalectryon by the name Vermilion, affectionately dubbed Vermin by the staff. Smashing together a horse and a rooster is pretty interesting thing.
Oh, and the roosters were referenced from photos on Wikipedia.
Solar Eclipse from Kanarraville, UT. May 20th, 2012
Credit: by-tor
In Choctaw history, solar eclipses were attributed to black squirrels, or a black squirrel, supposed to be eating the luminary, and they must be driven off if mankind were still to enjoy the heat and light. Cushman says:
The Choctaw … attributed an eclipse of the sun to a black squirrel, whose eccentricities often led it into mischief, and, among other things, that of trying to eat up the sun at different intervals. When thus inclined, they believed, which was confirmed by long experience, that the only effective means to prevent so fearful a catastrophe befalling the world as the blotting out of that indispensable luminary, was to favor the little, black epicure with a first-class scare; therefore, whenever he manifested an inclination to indulge in a meal on the sun, every ingenuity was called into requisition to give him a genuine fright so that he would be induced, at least, to postpone his meal on the sun at that particular time and seek a lunch elsewhere. As soon, therefore, as the sun began to draw its lunar veil over its face, the cry was heard from every mount from the Dan to the Beersheba of their then wide extended territory, echoing from hill to dale, “Funi lusa hushi umpa! Funi lusa hushi umpa,” according to our phraseology, the black squirrel is eating the sun! Then and there was heard a sound of tumult by day in the Choctaw Nation for the space of an hour or two. Far exceeding that said to have been heard by night in Belgium’s Capital, and sufficient in the conglomeration of discordant tones terrific, if heard by the distant, little, fastidious squirrel, to have made him lose forever afterward all relish for a mess of suns for an early or late dinner.
The shouts of the women and children mingling with the ringing of discordant bells as the vociferous pounding and beating of earsplitting tin pans and cups mingling in “wild confusion worse confounded,” yet in sweet unison with a first-class orchestra of yelping, howling, barking dogs gratuitously thrown in by the innumerable and highly excited curs, produced a din, which even a “Funi lusa,” had he heard it, could scarcely have endured even to have indulged in a nibble or two of the sun, though urged by the demands of a week’s fasting.
But during the wild scene the men were not idle spectators, or indifferent listeners. Each stood a few paces in front of his cabin door with no outward manifestation of excitement whatever - so characteristic of the Indian warrior but with his trusty rifle in hand, which so oft had proved a friend sincere in many hours of trial, which he loaded and fired in rapid succession at the distant, devastating squirrel, with the same coolness and calm deliberation that he did when shooting at his game. More than once have I witnessed the fearful yet novel scene. When it happened to be the time of a total eclipse of the sun, a sufficient evidence that the little, black epicure meant business in regard to having a square meal, though it took the whole sun to furnish it, then indeed there were sounds of revelry and tumult unsurpassed by any ever heard before, either in “Belgium” or elsewhere.
Then the women shrieked and redoubled their efforts upon the tin pans, which, under the desperate blows, strained every vocal organ to do its utmost and whole duty in loud response, while the excited children screamed and beat their tin cups, and the sympathetic dogs (whose name was legion) barked and howled - all seemingly determined not to fall the one behind the other in their duty since the occasion demanded it; while the warriors still stood in profound and meditative silence, but firm and undaunted, as they quickly loaded and fired their rifles, each time taking deliberate aim, if perchance the last shot might prove the successful one; then, as the moon’s shadow began to move from the disk of the sun, the joyful shout was heard above the mighty din “Funi-lusa-osh mahlatah! ” The black squirrel is frightened.
But the din remained unabated until the sun again appeared in its usual splendor, and all nature again assumed its harmonious course.
The stage of painting whereupon everything is mired in indecision and uncertainty. I’m mucking about you guys…have no clue how that will all work out for me! It always starts out as a great idea and then you get to this stage and just sit back and stare at it with furrowed eyebrows and pinched lips.
Oh well, nothin’ for it but to keep at it…
(Source: spiramirabilis)