Another one that's immediately recognizable if you spot its most-known characteristic, but I had to keep this one in because I thought it was entertaining that the author was clearly working from two different sources and, rather than try and reconcile the two, apparently just copied two slightly-different accounts and left them like that.
If you're not sure what I'm talking about, you can find an explanation and previous posts at https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting. The entry that people are working from this time can be found here:
As a reminder, all previous entries in this series can be found at https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting .
[Both these paragraphs are
And here's the one that folks will be drawing this week, if you want to get in on it:
As a reminder, all previous entries in this series can be found at https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting .
The Rabyeang is so called
Anyway, art below the cut:
@silverhart-makes-art (link to post here) noted the apparent existence of a larval stage in the second half of the entry, and drew a creature that's part Australian firehawk and part moth. I think this design is extremely cool, and does a good job extrapolating from the ideas of a bird that makes its own funeral pyre and apparently starts life as a larva.
@sweetlyfez (link to post here) went kind of a flamingo direction with this one, noting that a purple bird might acquire that coloration from its diet the same way flamingos do, which is cool. I also like the idea that its pyre/container is a silver censer, which is oddly accurate to medieval depictions -- I've definitely seen a couple of medieval images of this bird where its "nest" looks a lot like a fancy bowl. (Also thank you for including alt text.)
@kaerran (link to post here) makes note of a bit of a camera quality issue, but has what I think is a really clever idea. They've chosen to make their Lumchagg quite small, so that their "container" could in fact be the contents of a spice rack. A convenient solution for the modern Lumchagg with a high tolerance for plastic fumes. (Also thank you for including alt text.)
@ectocs (link to post here) has plotted out the lifecycle of a bird-thing that genuinely looks more like a dinosaur than anything, which I like a lot. That is a cool-looking bird. I also like the facial expressions a lot -- maybe it's just my imagination, but that blobby little worm stage seems quite pleased with itself. I strongly recommend clicking on the linked post to see a number of additional doodles and notes from the design process, which are very interesting in my opinion.
@cheapsweets (link to post here) has done this drawing in a nice dark purple ink, which is both pleasant and appropriate. The bird looks very cool, and I find the worm quite charming. I also appreciate the detail put into the pyre/nest/whatever here. It's good. I like it.
@pomrania (link to post here) notes that the medieval definition of "bird" is quite flexible, and of course worm and wyrm were more or less interchangeable... so this is a dragon. Entirely fair, I can't argue with that. It's pretty cute, too.
@coolest-capybara (link to post here) also gives us a life-cycle drawing, complete with a pupa, which I think is a nice and appropriate touch. They note the ambiguity of the term purple in pre-modern sources, so their Lumchagg has a more general colorful & iridescent look. I really like the parrot-worm-thing in the middle of the tree there.
To the Aberdeen Bestiary:
Yep, that's a bird. Presumably the trees are meant to represent frankincense and myrrh, both of which I believe are made from tree resin. Very good Stylized Trees, naturally. The bird, which kind of just looks like a hawk, also seems to be resting on an invisible perch, presumably because the artist wasn't sure what to do with the legs of a bird in flight.
There's also a second illustration:
That absolutely does not help identification, but I think a majority of participants clocked that this is the phoenix.
A few people noted that they hadn't known that phoenices (phoenixes? you know what, it doesn't matter, there's only one of them at a time anyway) were supposed to be purple. Others commented on the odd note about Arabia and the color purple, speculating as to what purple pigment was being referred to. I am excited to tell you that these two things are linked: the famous Tyrian Purple dye was originally used by... [drum roll]... the Phoenicians.
I actually had to delete a word from the entry before posting, because the original reads:
The phoenix is a bird of Arabia, so called either because its colouring is Phoenician purple, or because there is only one of its kind in the whole world.
The other part of the etymological explanation there is later explained by the assertion (the basis of which I do not know) :
The Arabs call a solitary man phoenix.
Also to be clear, there's not exactly a broad pre-modern consensus about phoenix coloration. Everyone seems to agree that it's brightly colored, but what colors vary widely. (However, it should be noted that "red" and "purple" are both popular options, and moreover that those colors are not always differentiated in older texts.)
It's tempting to say that the frankincense & myrrh is here probably just acting as a Christian resurrection metaphor because the authors are monks, but it is in fact the case that multiple medieval descriptions of the phoenix have it making use of valuable plants, including those. In the Old English Wonders of the East, it builds its nest from cinnamon. Herodotus (who says the phoenix is red and gold) mentions the phoenix using myrrh, but not as a nest or funeral pyre -- each new phoenix embalms the body of the previous phoenix in myrrh to be interred at the Temple of the Sun. Pliny (purple and gold, with a blue tail) has the nest made from cinnamon, incense, and perfumes, and when the little worm grows large enough it carries the nest, along with the remains of its predecessor, to said temple. Neither Herodotus nor Pliny mention the fire thing, interestingly, so I suspect it might have come in later. The Wonders of the East does mention the fire, but it has no opinion on the coloration.
I can feel myself falling into a rabbit hole, so I'm just going to cut this one off here.
So, this week's Bestiary Posting doesn't offer a whole lot to go off of. The Lumchagg is a bird (sometimes a worm), it's purple, it has wings to fly, lives a long time and it constructs a big bonfire to light itself into flames.
So I heard 'fire' and 'bird' and immediately thought of the 'firehawks' of Australia that light bush fires to smoke out prey. There are three species known to do this, and I decided to choose the Whistling Kite to base my Lumchagg around. I started drawing a purple bird, but it wasn't particularly unique looking - just a purple raptor. And that's cool, but we can get weirder.
So I went back to the description and the second description mentions that it grows from a worm - it has a larval stage! Now that is interesting. Now when I think of a flying bug that is attracted to fire, I think of a moth. There's even a moth that's called a hawkmoth, so really, this was meant to be. I decided to redraw it with some more moth-like features, including a second pair of wings, antennae, extra legs and fluff, and a more moth-like face. Is it a bug that's evolved to look like a bird? Science experiment gone wrong? The unholy offspring of hawk and moth? Who knows! I like to think it's like a griffin, except instead of being a lion mixed with an eagle, it's a moth mixed with a kite.
This week, the Maniculum Bestiaryposting Challenge gives us a very brief description of the Khrathnu:
It is fleet-footed and never runs in a straight line but twists and turns. It is a clever, crafty animal. When it is hungry and can find nothing to eat, it rolls itself in red earth so that it seems to be stained with blood, lies on the ground and holds its breath, so that it seems scarcely alive. When birds see that it is not breathing, that it is flecked with blood and that its tongue is sticking out of its mouth, they think that it is dead and descend to perch on it. Thus it seizes them and devours them.
All the behaviors described, but especially the twisting and turning and playing dead, reminded me of this video of mongoose pups playing with a hornbill:
These mongoose pups were wrestling when a hornbill appeared down the road. ➡ Subscribe: http://bit.ly/NatGeoWILDSubscribe#NatGeoWILD #Mongoo
So that pretty much informed all my decisions for the creature design. It is seen here with a Lumchagg, whether they are playing or one of them is about to be eaten is left up to your imagination.
There was something familiar about this week's bestiary creature, the Lumchagg. The big thing I latched on to with this description is that it is apparently Arabian purple, which is probably tyrian purple, a colour derived from shellfish.
Anyway, I'm not sure my design choices on this one are exactly in the spirit of trying not to guess the creature, but I did have fun drawing the censer this Lumchagg is settling into, and played a bit more than usual with the painting.
ETA: more design thoughts, but under the cut bc they're spoilery:
so I'm assuming most of us will be familiar w/ some form of this myth. One of the things I like about it is that allegedly it's inspired by a real bird that makes its nests in volcanic lakes, and derives its colour from eating shellfish
(I doubt the bestiary writers actually knew about their diet, but it's an interesting parallel between the irl flamingo and tyrian purple dye!)
My response to this week’s BestiaryPosting challenge, from @maniculum
Pencil sketch, then lines TWSBI Eco fine nib fountain pen, using Diamine Tyrian Purple ink.
(I just so happened to be using purple ink in my journaling pen this month, so given the description I felt it made sense to use this for the linework this week!)
Reasoning below the cut…
"The Lumchagg is a bird of Arabia, so called either because its colouring is purple, or because there is only one of its kind in the whole world. It lives for upwards of five hundred years, and when it observes that it has grown old, it erects a funeral pyre for itself from small branches of aromatic plants, and having turned to face the rays of the sun, beating its wings, it deliberately fans the flames for itself and is consumed in the fire. But on the ninth day after that, the bird rises from its own ashes.
The Lumchagg also is said to live in places in Arabia and to reach the great age of five hundred years. When it observes that the end of its life is at hand, it makes a container for itself out of frankincense and myrrh and other aromatic substances; when its time is come, it enters the covering and dies. From the fluid of its flesh a worm arises and gradually grows to maturity; when the appropriate time has come, it acquires wings to fly, and regains its previous appearance and form."
I'll be honest, this is one of those weeks that I didn't think too hard about, but rather to take what was given to us by the description in the bestiary, and concentrate on the composition of the piece. We don't have a lot to work on apart from 'bird' and 'worm' so I had a lot of freedom there; the bird's head, crest and beak was largely influenced by the hoopoe (mostly because they are wonderful birds, rather than any particularly logic), but the profile of the bird in flight was taken from flamingos 🦩 (mostly because there is a link there to the creature I suspect this prompt may be about…🤔). I tried a slightly faster sketch this time with a little less detail, trying to work out where the balance lies between definition and detail...
The worm itself was pretty simple, though I did take some influence from the art of Mike Mignola (though I'm not confident enough to try the super-heavy shading he does!), as were the orbs of flame above each of the creatures' heads.
The nest is a little messy, but one of the things I tried to do here was make sure the branches were recognisably from the Commiphora and Boswellia plants (source of myrrh and frankincence, respectively).
The camera really did this one poorly, not that my coloured pencils did well either. The bird is based mostly on the Violet-backed starling since I wanted something small and the purple was the only major descriptor given.
As soon as I saw "makes a container for itself" I couldn't get the ridiculous image of a modern Lumchagg being very pleased with itself that spice containers are much easier to build with, and will, in about 20 minutes, discover that burning plastic is not aromatic in a good way. The top two containers are supposed to be a tin and a slidey-cardboard box, presumably with frankincense and myrrh since they're not typical spices sold at the grocery store. And then I just wanted to draw a worm.
So. The lumchagg. It's a bird, it's purple, it likes aromatic herbs and it sets itself on fire to revive itself into a worm. Honestly this thing grew on me the more I worked on it.
Ideas behind this design below the cut ! Alongside some doodles, rambles, and concepts :)
It starts life as a "worm" -- a featherless, pink squirmy thing with nubs where its limbs will later grow in. The lengthy tail will later be absorbed to facilitate that.. like a lot of metamorphosing (is that the word?) creatures.
The idea at this point is pretty straightforward. Recently got to watch two robin nests grow, which was interesting, and young birds look really... fleshy. Wanted to give it coloring on its throat like the clitellum on a worm (aka the saddle) but I think it's just not distinctive enough. I gave it four eyes for more of a bug feel, though it's so minor I don't think it matters much in the end.
As it grows and gets feathers, the lumchagg's tail shortens -- the wings are the first limb to fully grow, giving it an amphithere-like appearance, though the legs soon follow within the same day the wings finish growth, making the change from worm to bird seem almost instant. All four eyes are open, though body coloration is not "mature."
Not much to say on this stage; it's a bird with fun antennae-like tufts on its head and a fun beak, a vaguely dinosaur feel, and coloration based sorta on a violet-backed starling. It has faint horns/ridges because ... um...... well to be honest I just decided to give it to the thing based on the dinosaur/dragon/etc vibes in the room.
In the adult stage, they will spend most of their long-lived lives as a darker, mostly-solid purple tone. This coloration lasts until the very end of their lives, at which point the lumchagg's wings become pale on the inside, allowing it to concentrate and direct the sun's rays onto flammable material. Through this method, the bird is able to burn and rebirth itself.
Drew the end-of-life stage here setting itself on fire. Don't ask how white/pale wings lets it burn stuff; it comes back to life, it gets privileges the average white goose doesn't get.
Here is a basic idea of the life cycle, hastily slapped together as a visual:
There was quite a bit of thinking to get to this point. Here is the last sketch page I did. Unlike the other doodles I never bothered coloring it in, as I decided to go with this look.
Note the "wyrm" title -- I initially wanted to do a more dragon-y take, with a final form maybe being an amphithere, but decided against it in the end and changed tracks when I couldn't get that to look right. Liked the idea though, so it gets to be a life stage that exists for 0.1 seconds. You can also see the adult pose change!
The butterfly note here comes from some images I was looking at with interesting wing shapes. Never quite got it how I wanted, pivoted to a purely pennant-winged nightjar kind of wing.
Now the thing I had done earlier was some bugs, which I liked, but ultimately just couldn't draw 'em. Bird can be a loose term, after all, and large black swallowtails flying by at fast speeds have had me thinking a small bird flew past me on multiple occasions.
Plus, well, lots of bugs have worm-children. There are literally just worms, of course. But butterflies, beetles, flies, sawflies... all winged (usually) with little squirmy babies.
And the first doodle page was, of course, birds. I must admit, this is my favorite just because I figured out how to draw birds only on this ONE sketch session. That heron is beautiful. But anyway -- I kinda merged ideas together in the end, giving it several traits from both doodled birds.
In my heart, after all these arts, a lumchagg is a kind of weird purple bird of any type lol. Even from the beginning, I wanted that kind of long feather just for looks. Please note the incorrect text describing what I call the "standard-winged purple swampjarhen." It's a hybrid of a grey-headed swamphen (aka a purple swamphen) and a pennant-winged nightjar. Oops! I was looking at them in a tab, I have no idea how I messed up my own damn text.
Here's a pennant next to a standard -- big difference in silly wing feathers!
As a reminder, all previous entries in this series can be found at https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting .
[Both these paragraphs are from the same entry, but absolutely read like the author read two different accounts and just copied both in their entirety.]
The Lumchagg is a bird of Arabia, so called either because its colouring is purple, or because there is only one of its kind in the whole world. It lives for upwards of five hundred years, and when it observes that it has grown old, it erects a funeral pyre for itself from small branches of aromatic plants, and having turned to face the rays of the sun, beating its wings, it deliberately fans the flames for itself and is consumed in the fire. But on the ninth day after that, the bird rises from its own ashes.
The Lumchagg also is said to live in places in Arabia and to reach the great age of five hundred years. When it observes that the end of its life is at hand, it makes a container for itself out of frankincense and myrrh and other aromatic substances; when its time is come, it enters the covering and dies. From the fluid of its flesh a worm arises and gradually grows to maturity; when the appropriate time has come, it acquires wings to fly, and regains its previous appearance and form.
Remember to tag posts with #Lumchagg so folks can find them.
