This week, the Maniculum Bestiaryposting Challenge presents the Dolthruk!
The Dolthruk is so called from the color of [redacted]. They live in the river, four-footed animals equally at home on land or in the water and more than twenty cubits long. The Dolthruk is armed with monstrous teeth and claws and has such a tough skin that however hard you throw a stone at it, you will not hurt the beast. It goes into the water at night and rests by day on the land. It lays its eggs on land, and both male and female take it in turns to hatch them. A certain kind of fish whose serrated spines tear open the soft part of their belly kills them. Alone among animals they can move their upper jaw and hold the lower one still.
This was a really fun one! It's always great to have a lot of physical characteristics and to put them together in whatever way seems most fun to draw. The first thing I considered was that if the Dolthruks' worst enemy are fish that cut their bellies open from below, they'd probably adapt to avoid this. I based the pose on a cat arching its back. The tough skin made me think of a turtle, but it would still need to be somewhat flexible to accomodate flexible movement, so the shell is composed of individual pieces. Finally, the bit about moving the upper jaw independently made me think of beaks, and combined with the four legs and laying eggs, I decided to add a bit of platypus into the mix.
More physical description than usual on this one, some of which I worry makes the creature a bit obvious, but we'll see how that plays out.
If you're not sure what any of this is about, please refer to https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting.
To see the entry the artists are working from, click here:
As a reminder, all previous entries in this series can be found at https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting .
The Dolthruk is so called
To see the one we're doing for next week, and possibly contribute your own work, click here:
As a reminder, all previous entries in this series can be found at https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting .
The Gibemlut, [redacted],
Art below the cut.
@silverhart-makes-art (link to post here) started with a platypus, then added some other influences to make the described size work. I think it came out quite well -- that is a solid depiction of what a platypus relative might look like if it were huge and terrifying.
@cheapsweets (link to post here) has also given us something quite frightening -- I don't think I'd want to get near this one. Or see it in person. The inspirations for this design are pretty interesting -- I'd recommend checking them out in the linked post. And, if that distinctively-patterned hide looks familiar to you, that is addressed in the linked post as well. (Also thank you for providing alt text.)
@citrvsdrake (link to post here) also has a quite fearsome rendition, this one almost draconic -- in their post, they mention that they originally thought of some sort of river snake, but with armor and legs this becomes more of a dragon. I think it's a good dragon, too.
@pomrania (link to post here) also started with the idea of making a large, dangerous platypus, but went in a different direction, emphasizing scales and spikes. I like the serrated bill here; that's a nice touch.
@wendievergreen (link to post here) has instead drawn something adorable, noting that they decided to go in the opposite direction of what they suspected the animal was. I think it's delightful. For explanation of the inspirations for this design, and a close-up of the image, see the linked post. (Also, thank you for providing alt text -- and I think the banana thing is still funny too.)
@coolest-capybara (link to post here) brings the Beast Vibe back to "frightening" with this creation. Some fantastic work with the faces on both the Dolthruk and the fish, and of course I love the Stylized Plants... listen. Does anyone else think this looks like the cover of a really wild album? (Also, thank you for providing alt text.)
Anyway.
Aberdeen Bestiary says...
... no picture for you. It's not been cut out this time, they just didn't draw one. This section is more or less without illustrations, in fact. Maybe they considered it less important -- according to the bestiary's categorization system, this is a fish, actually. Sure, it has legs, but it lives in the water, what else do you want?
The Ashmole Bestiary, my backup illustration source, makes the same decision, but Bodley MS 764, my backup text source, does provide an illustration (and doesn't call it a fish).
Okay, so that's not a hugely realistic depiction, but it's probably not completely shocking to say that this is the crocodile.
I was surprised not to see any reference to tears in the Aberdeen entry -- the concept of "crocodile tears" is popular in the bestiaries.
The bit about color that I redacted from the entry claims that the crocodile's name comes from crocus due to its saffron-colored hide (not in evidence in the above image). I don't think this is true -- both English words can be traced back through Latin to Greek, and they certainly sound similar, but it seems crocus is probably a loanword into Greek from somewhere in the Semitic language family (hard to say which language specifically), and thus unrelated to crocodile despite their shared elements.
Another one where I deliberately went in the opposite direction of the (suspected) Real Beast.
The pose is referenced from a giant river otter, while the colors, pointy face, and tail are from the water possum, and the giant armadillo provided the shell, ears, and feet. The water lily is based on Victoria amazonica, and the banana is for scale.
Close up for increased gel pen visiblity:
Fun water possum fact! They're only of the only known marsupials where both females and males have pouches :o so that's how my parent dolthruks trade who's incubating the little dolthruckings
It's a platypus, it's a hippo, it's an otter - no, it's this week's Bestiary Posting the Dolthruk (feel like I may've made this joke before).
Reading this week's entry about a four footed, river dwelling nocturnal animal that lays eggs - well, my mind went to the platypus. And reading that it was 20 cubits long didn't mean anything to me until I looked it up and it's apparently 30 feet? That's enormous. That's like the size of a small whale. Can you imagine an orca sized platypus hauling itself out of the water in front of you?
Anyway, the dolthruk. I went with playtpus, but I had to make it equally at home on land as in the water, so I referenced the giant river otter to give them a bit more definition (because platypuses really just look like flattened sausages) so it could believably walk on land. For the toughness of it's skin, I thought of the hippo, and I then leaned into that and gave it a hippo-esque snout and some gnarly tusks for fighting. The entry mentions 'monstrous teeth', which adult platypuses don't have, but they do have horny pads in their mouth for mashing stuff up. I decided to make these pads have serrated, tooth-like structures to fit the 'monsterous teeth' description.
Honestly, of all the weird beasts I've drawn for bestiary posting, I think a thirty foot long platypus with a mouth full of sharp tooth-spines is probably the scariest.
My response to this week’s BestiaryPosting challenge, from @maniculum
Pencil sketch, then lines in Pentel brush pen.
Thought process under the cut…
"The Dolthruk is so called from the color of [redacted]. They live in the river, four-footed animals equally at home on land or in the water and more than twenty cubits long. The Dolthruk is armed with monstrous teeth and claws and has such a tough skin that however hard you throw a stone at it, you will not hurt the beast. It goes into the water at night and rests by day on the land. It lays its eggs on land, and both male and female take it in turns to hatch them. A certain kind of fish whose serrated spines tear open the soft part of their belly kills them. Alone among animals they can move their upper jaw and hold the lower one still. From their dung is made an ointment with which old women and faded whores [bestiary is judgmental today, damn] anoint their faces, and appear beautiful until their sweat washes it off."
I spent an awful lot of time mulling this one over. We actually get quite a bit of description for a change, which is nice to work with too!
We also know that it's a beast, rather than a serpent or any other manner of creature. This is where it gets a little complicated, as we also know it lays eggs! My first thought was making it a monotreme; the idea of a monstrous platypus really tickled me, but I couldn't quite work out how to manage 'monstrous teeth' in what is a rather toothless clade of critters (@silverhart-makes-art came up with a solution and a brilliant rendition of this concept!), so I went down a whole rabbit hole of early mammals and mammal ancestors. The most impressive teeth (and claws) definitely belong to the therapsids, and specifically, the gorgonopsids. So, we end up with an amphibious gorgonopsid!
Incidentally, gorgonopsids are far weirder than an initial look would indicate - did you know that a lot of early therapsids had a pineal eye or light sensing organ atop their head (similar to modern tuataras), as well as very weird joints!
We have webbed feet so it can get around in the water when it is not lounging on land and taking turns to care for its eggs and young. I also gave it a shorter neck, and lowered the eye socket in the skull so that, at a glance at least, it looks more like the upper jaw can be moved while the lower jaw remains still.
We also have the issue of the very tough skin. Now, as its is a beast rather than a serpent, I initially didn't want to give it armour plates. I also considered a pangolin's scales, but felt the overlapping scales would trap water and not be particularly hygienic. Now, the fearsome hippopotamus has famously thick skin, but I couldn't quite work out how to represent this. Rhinos are similar, but a little more obvious, until a solution struck me. Hence, we now have an amphibious gorgonopsid lounging near its nest with armour plates inspired by Albrecht Dürer's Rhinoceros…
Of course, we also have 'a certain kind of fish' in the water. Largely based on the weaver fish, a fishie native to British waters, with distinctive venomous spines! Best stay out of the water for now, Dolthruk!
