Creatures

Zel Cariad

Zel Cariad on ‘Creatures’

I find the complexity and weirdness of mythology and folklore fun and fascinating but nature and real animals are often just as strange, if not more so. I regularly draw the critters I find interesting, both the real and mythical ones including cryptids, which sometimes turn out to be both. Typically, I start by doing the pencils and inks on A4 paper, then the piece gets scanned-in so I can colour it digitally.

For this six shot showcase I have chosen works based on mythology — one from ancient angelic lore, three from Norse — and two illustrations featuring real animals from nature.

Chalkydri are a kind of angel that appear in the Second Book of Enoch. In the book, Enoch (an ancestor of Noah and father of Methuselah) ascends through various heavens. Ten heavens are described, and the Chalkydri live in fourth heaven. Their appearance is “empurpled, like the rainbow,” they have twelve wings each, feet and tails like those of a lion’s, heads of crocodiles, and are “nine hundred measures” in size — I don’t know how much a ‘measure’ is, but I presume a Chalkydri would be rather huge. Their duties include accompanying the sun and, at sunrise, all the Chalkydri start singing to tell the world’s birds a new day has arrived and it’s time for the dawn chorus.