#greuceanu

[artbyanca]

Waiting beneath the bridge

Greuceanu slayed the younger zmei and is waiting for their dad to return from hunting.

[stuckinblrjail]

Greuceanu by Yuuza on DeviantArt

Greuceanu by Yuuza

loosely inspired by the romanian fairytale "greuceanu" the girl is not some sort of angel but a raven, she's giving Greuceanu water because he promised her 3 corpses to eat while his opponent promised only one pretty twisted but that's romanian folklore for you

[caciula-lui-burebista]

Today I'll be talking about:

Zmei

Zmeu (pl. Zmei, f. Zmeoaică, Zmeoaice) is a fantastic creature from Romanian folklore. It can be compared to a Balaur, a Dragon or an Ogre, but it's...different from them, because it has clear anthropomorphic AND reptilian traits.

Appearance

Zmei have legs, arms and a torso, all of which are similar to human ones. They also have reptilian features (dragon ones, if you will), like fangs, wings, the shape of the head, a tail, scales etc.

Role in stories

The Zmeu is always the antagonist, kidnapping beautiful princesses and wanting to marry them (like Ileana Cosânzeana) or stealing magic objects (like the Golden Apples). Anyhow, a prince or a young man (who, after demonstrating his power to the Emperor, is promised a part of the kingdom) goes to rescue the stolen objects/princess.

This is yet another illustration of the fight of good versus evil, admirable traits (bravery, kindness, friendship) always winning against the Zmeu, who represents greed, lust and selfishness.

Home of the Zmei

The Zmei usually reside in "the other world" (Lumea Cealaltă), suggested to be below the ground, as the prince "descends" into the land of the Zmei.

Linguistic aspects, inspiration

Many scholars say that the Zmeu (Romanian) is inspired from the Slavic Zmey, which are the Slavic dragons. Some say that it may be influenced by the Dacian language. Who knows?

Unfortunately I didn't find too many images that respect the description of the Zmei from the folk tales, but if you DO have anything feel free to comment or reblog with a picture ^_^

Image sources:

1

2

[artbyanca]

The swearing of the oath

Greuceanu swears to bring the sun and moon back or die trying.

Should I...write a translation or retell the story in English?

[artbyanca]

Eavesdropping

The wives of the zmei recognized Greuceanu and locked themselves in their house to plot his demise. Our hero turned into a fly and snuked in to listen to their plans.

[artbyanca]

The fork in the road

Crossing into the otherworld the path split and so did Greuceanu and his brother.

I said the brother is younger, but the tale doesn't actually say who's older, but he sort of has younger brother energy. Like Greuceanu told his mom he was off to save the world and his mom told him to take his baby brother too, so he had to.

[artbyanca]

The two prisoners

Greuceanu convinces the emperor to spare two men condemned to death for desertion.

This is kind of my favorite part of the tale because it's very relateble. Dude was the greatest hero of his time with more feats then people could count but he still had anxiety and needed to do a side quest before the main one to build confidence. That's me. I do that every single time; even for things I did a million times before. My excitement for client work is always served with a side of panic and I get over it by doing a smaller thing first.

Here you can see the first instance of self indulgence: I really wanted Greuceanu to wear the gear of a călușar. Does it take forever to draw all the details? Yes. Do I care? No.

[artbyanca]

The troubled emperor

A family of zmei kidnapped the sun and moon in the reign of the Red Emperor and he sent word to all corners of the world that whoever rescues them and brings back the light to the world will recive half his realm and his daughter's hand in marriage.

It is strange to be working on Romanian fairy tales while I have never been more afraid for my country or my future in it.

For context:

Illustrating my childhood fairy tales has been a long time dream of mine but I always thought myslef not good enough to do it. Well, some time ago I had to snap myself to the reality that I already illustrated sevral books professionally so there's no excuse not to tackle my old favorites. I started with the Romanian fairy tale 'Greuceanu' and I was very self indulgent with the project since I managed to squeeze 15 illustrations out of a roughly 3500 word text and I also made some very choice design decisions.

Now, sketching them out has been an utter joy but the inking...I started doing it right before our first round of our presidential election. I've been a ball of fear, anger and dipair ever since a Russian stenographer who praised the architects of the holocaust as heroes and pretends he's a man of the people outsider even though he was in the background of some of our most corrupt goverments won the most votes with an entierly tiktok and scam call campaign. It has been a rough week to say the least and I've been trying to keep sane by moving my pen across the paper. Results mixed, but there's more illustrations comming.