The Keensighted Yagstong

The Keensighted Yagstong

My response to this week’s BestiaryPosting challenge, from @maniculum - thanks again for running these challenges!

Pencil sketch, then lines in Sailor fude nib fountain pen, using Diamine Sepia ink. A very quick one this week, but I'm pretty pleased with how it looks given the time spent :)

Thought process under the cut…

"There is an animal called in Latin [redacted], because it chooses to live in rugged places; some call it [redacted]. These are the tame Yagstongs which the Greeks called [redacted], because they have very sharp sight. They live in high mountains and can tell if men approaching a long way off are hunters or travellers."

So, an animal that lives in rugged places, or high mountains. Probably something very sure footed, and with a thick coat to keep it warm in the high altitudes.

We also know that it has excellent eyesight. For various other reasons noted below I went with a goat-like creature, and of course one of the things everyone on tumblr knows is that some goats have horizontal/rectangular pupils... Now, this is actually to give them sharper panoramic vision (and also gives them better vision in high and low light). Now the really weird thing is, apparently their eyes rotate in their skulls when they raise or lower their heads, maintaining that panoramic vision and allowing them to scan for predators even when grazing...

The Yagstong has these characteristics: when grazing, it moves from high to even higher pastures. It picks out good grass from bad by the sharpness of its eyes. It feeds by chewing the grass. When wounded, it hurries to find the herb dittany and, by touching it, is healed.

So, a grazing animal, that lives in rugged terrain. Definitely an ungulate, probably (but not necessarily) a bovid. The mountainous terrain is definitely giving me very mountain goat vibes, so we have a goat-like creatuer heavily influenced by ibex and mountain goats.

I chose not to give it the impressive horns of an ibex because I feel like this sort of characteristic feature would most likely be mentioned in the bestiary entry. As such, the horns are a little understated.

It has thick downy hair on its back, and shaggy hair on its limbs to protect it from the cold of the mountain nights. It also has the widely spaced, cloven hooves of a mountain goat, and prominent dew claws to aid with gripping on those rugged slopes where it lives.

Okay, it keeps getting brought up in multiple entries - there must be something really special about dittany (mostly, it seems to be slightly toxic 🤔). I'm pretty sure I've drawn this in a previous entry, but I feel like I'm getting slowly better at drawing plants as well - the flowers on Dittany are really pretty!

[The following appears in a separate entry on the same animal for some reason]

The male Yagstong is a wanton and frisky animal, always longing for sex; as a result of its lustfulness its eyes look sideways — from which it has derived its name. [Etymology redacted] Its nature is so very heated that its blood alone will dissolve a diamond, against which the properties of neither fire nor iron can prevail. Young Yagstongs take their name from the word for eating, for the young ones are very fat and taste delicious.

The eyes on the side of the head tracks with everything else we already know about this animal. We have some other interesting features mentions (including the fact that this beast is so frisky its blood can dissolve the hardest material on Earth...

Since I didn't have the time to draw cute round baby Yagstongs, I'm hoping that someone else took the opportunity!

I had the vaguest idea that this description might relate to lions, but I didn't have a lot to go on (it was purely a vague sense based on the generally positive impression the writer seems to have of this creatuer, and a half-remembered reference to the cubs being born dead and later revived). Another fun week :)

Bestiaryposting Results: Gerzlaem

I'm currently out of state visiting family, so this post might be a bit brief. Anyway, we've got us a new critter. If you don't know what that's about, you can find out at https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting.

You can find the description of the critter in question here:

The one we're doing next is here if you want to join in:

And this week's art is below the cut.

@silverhart-makes-art (link to post here) gives us these Definitely Mammals that are rather difficult to classify. I always enjoy this effect of "it doesn't really look like anything, but it looks like it would fit in as a reasonable animal design." There's substantial additional information about these critters in the linked post.

@coolest-capybara (link to post here) has drawn something delightfully bizarre, and I really enjoy both the design and style here. Again you may find additional information in the linked post.

@citrvsdrake (link to post here) was inspired by the description of the Gerzlaem pulling food back out of its stomach -- apparently this is a frog behavior, so we have the very frog-like feline you see before you. That is an unsettling face to have staring at you, but it is a clever decision I think.

@cheapsweets (link to post here) has decided to draw all three types of Gerzlaem even though the entry only actually describes two of them -- they propose that the third type is just intermediate between the other two. I also need to acknowledge the "scorpion" in the back there; excellent. For a detailed explanation of this image, please see the linked post.

@pomrania (link to post here) has doodled various elements of the entry for us here, and seems to have settled on a canine interpretation. I'm... fascinated by what's going on with that ape there. Some of these are very expressive too. More about all of these in the linked post.

@wendievergreen (link to post here) posits that the three different types of Gerzlaem are the same animal in different seasons, and has drawn this goat/cougar creature in various stages of wooliness. I think this is a good idea, and the art style is pleasant. You can get more information from the linked post, though an explanation for the song lyrics is not included.

@strixcattus (link to post here) has drawn us some dog-like critters which I can't type too much about because I saw their post right after I posted this one and now I'm hurriedly editing. As usual, there's a naturalist-style description in the linked post that I recommend checking out. Good dog-things here all around.

Now, to the Aberdeen Bestiary...

...actually we don't have a picture for this one. And it's not a missing or damaged page this time -- there isn't an illustration for this one in the Ashmole Bestiary either. It's the first entry in the bestiary, and I guess the fancy initials used up too much of the illumination budget:

Of course, this is a long entry, so they could have put the illustration on the next page, but I don't want to backseat-scribe here. Here's the one from MS Bodley 764, though, so we can see what it looks like:

Yep, that's a lion all right.

The lion is typically the first entry because it has that "king of beasts" reputation -- bestiary authors and others in the intellectual tradition of the time took the idea of some sort of animal hierarchy seriously and made sure the lion got pride of place. I think it's a Great Chain of Being thing, but honestly I just haven't done enough research on that whole concept to speak on it in an informed manner.

A lot of the rest of the entry is allegory, but some of it seems to just be nonsense of its own tradition. I suppose the lion's tail does look something like a brush, so I can see the steps there, but most of it I could not explain. This includes what exactly this thing is supposed to be:

We learn of small beasts called leontophones, lion-killers.

No idea. If you know, tell me please.

Legitimately one of my favourite films - ironically I only watched if gif the first time because I was trying to remember the name of another film I’d watched many years ago (that turned out to be Kind Hearts and Coronets…)

Especially for 1944 Arsenic and Old Lace is INSANE. Its feral. Two kind old maids are serial killers with a higher body count than Norman Bates, Cary Grant is on the edge of insanity, Peter Lorre is there, it has a sub plot concerning a man who thinks he's Theodore Roosevelt and becomes catatonic if he tries being someone else, they couldn't get Boris Karloff to reprise his role in the play so they made a guy up to look like Boris Karloff and shot all his scenes like a horror movie, it opens with a fist fight at a Dodgers game and it has nothing to do with the plot. 10/10 masterpiece.

Let's get cozy, friend.

[crow-time.com]

quick question why does your cat command you to print something on the printer

he really likes to watch the printer print. It seems like he thinks there’s some kind of creature in there that I have the mysterious power to summon that he can then hunt for sport?

he sticks his entire arm inside the printer and breaks it if I don’t put some kind of physical burrier between him and the printer but like he purrs so loud when it starts printing and will beg harder for people to print things than he will for treats.

he just loves hunting the printer so much. he even tried to climb inside the place the paper comes out of the printer when he was a kitten.

No matter where he is in the apartment if the printer makes a noise he sprints full speed. He also knows which button to press to get the printer to print like the ink levels info and alignment sheet, so you have to make sure it’s off or locked up or he will print nonstop himself and then attack the printer and jam it.

is it inconvenient that my cat is obsessed with the printer? yes, but damn if it’s not also adorable.

I don’t actually have a ton of photos of him sticking his whole arm in there though because stopping him from jamming the printer is usually a task that involves all of my arms and also all of my roommates arms.

Found an old tutorial of mine. 

Solid advice, past-me! <3