#polish legend

[briefbestiary]

A danger to snacking when the lights are out. This small night spirit gets itself eaten and then makes hunger worse from there.

[eze-3]

👀👀👀

Hamilton the musical, you say👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀

It may not look the part but I'll have you know szin's Hamilton animatics shaped my artstyle in 2019

[lionessleesha]

The Legend of the Pussy Willow

According to an old Polish legend, many springtimes ago a mother cat was crying at the bank of the river in which her kittens were drowning. The willows at the river’s edge longed to help her, so they swept their long graceful branches into the waters to rescue the tiny kittens who had fallen into the river while chasing butterflies. The kittens gripped on tightly to their branches and were safely brought to shore. Each springtime since, goes the legend, the willow branches sprout tiny fur-like buds at their tips where the tiny kittens once clung.

Artist Rose Mary Berlin

[blyszczopies]

[ID: a chart presenting five stamps with pictures depicting the Wawel Dragon legend. the first stamp shows the dragon in its cave, confidently breathing fire. it is green with darker stripe going from its nose to the tip of its tail. it has a snake shaped head with two upward horns, and spikes on its forehead, back and tail.

in the second stamp the dragon is curiously poking at the sheep standing in front of its cave. the shadow under the sheep has a skull shape. the third stamp shows the sheep. it has X marks instead of eyes and it has a visible sewing mark on its chest.

the fourth stamps portrays the dragon in its cave, taking a closer look at the sheep. it is holding it close it its face, with one eye squinted. in the fifth stamp, the dragon is drinking water from the lake. its body is swollen, as if had already drunk a lot of water.

the stamps are put together in a flipped letter C pattern. in the space between the first and last stamp is a doodle of the Wawel Dragon sitting with a hurt expression, with its body patched up. on its left is a strip of all the stamps in their real-life size. the close the space between the first and last stamp, giving an impression of a prison bar. End ID]

an assignment from my first semester of college, we had to make stamps featuring a polish legend of our choice. of course i choose the Wawel Dragon (Smok Wawelski) because i wanted to draw a dragon.

the legend says that long time ago the city of Cracow was plagued by a dragon. it would eat all of the citizens’ sheep and cattle. many knights have tried killing the beast, but they never succeeded and would instead get eaten by it. but one day a simple shoemaker left a sheep skin filled with sulfur for the dragon to eat. and it did eat it, thinking it was real a real animal. the sulfur burned its throat, so the dragon kept drinking water until it drank so much it exploded.

and yeah the shoemaker was generously rewarded but its not about him lol

[felicyta-of-rivia]

Thought I'd post it here. This is Pomórnik - a cryptid called the Polish chupacabra.

And yes, I know it's supposed to look more like a wolverine... but here's a belligerent, blood-sucking kitty with spikes on its back.

[emoclectic]

A painting inspired by an old Polish myth. When you hear this one kind of owl calling someone's name, they die. It's name even comes from this legend. I have never heard the calling really tho, but like it came to me while watching Twin Peaks cus "the owls are not what they seem", so kinda double inspiration. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out 🙃

[kazytka]

Syrenka Warszawska -> Warsaw mermaid 

[littlegreenpinetree]

And here comes Day 15 with topic “legend” - so here’s a basilisk from the legend from Warsaw. In this legend a monster lived in the basement in one of the buldings in the Old Town and anybody who went down there was turn into stone by the mere gaze of the creature. There are many versions of this legend. In one there were two teenagers and the brother went there to face the basilisk, so his sister saved him with the mirror. In the other the siblings are smaller and it’s his father who saves them with a shiny shield. But that thing is present in every version, I think: that in the end the monster turns itself into stone by looking into something that can reflect its gaze.