In Search of the Bear King
The second half of this year has been an oddly stagnant one for me creation-wise. The last 4 months I’ve had a run of bad luck and been stuck with the stresses of emergency car repairs and insanely expensive pet health expenses. As a result my general anxiety has increased and it’s obviously not a great environment for creativity.
After spending about half the year with a lingering sort of artist block – almost an existential boredom – I finally pushed myself to embrace my last ArtSnacks box of the year and my recently purchased Bee Paper Big Black Bee Bogus Pad.
These are great sketchbooks – and I’ve tried several brands over the years. I love that it has 100% recycled paper and the fact that the page weight is 70lbs means I can experiment with a lot of different materials, it’s been great for my home made Iron Gall Ink. The spiral binding makes it easy to sit flat while you work and get the full workspace of the page. Additionally, I find that the natural brown color of the paper (similar to the shade on the cover seen here) helps you see materials on a neutral tone instead of stark white.
Ok, weird confession time – for some reason I tend to feel slightly intimidated by white paper pads and end up not using them as much as I am finding I use this one. It’s been really fun to test drive and I definitely will be purchasing again.
Anyway, the mystery ArtSnacks box this month featured a couple of fun items, some I’d buy again and some I may not. However, the color palette was a big winner for me – black, white, gold, and olive green.
The Edding 1880 Liner 0.2 mm is a standout winner for me, however. I find it so hard to find a black graphic pen that is consistent – especially at the smaller sizes. I’ve been using this one on multiple pages of work and it does not disappoint.
You can see all of the December ArtSnacks items in action in their useful review video here.
Let me get back on track here. So I have been spending these past few months sort of in an art slump. Lots of sitting in my studio and looking around the room. Then I decided that I absolutely had to reorganize my whole studio – it’s never been this clean and organized before! I bought a LABEL MAKER on sale and it has changed my life!
Then, my ArtSnacks box arrived and I plopped myself down on my couch to doodle. Maybe a low-pressure change of venue would help me just produce something – anything – as a starting point on new work.
Well, this seems to have done the trick. Perhaps the limited color palette worked or some divine inspiration but while sitting on my velvety couch, zoning out to the Father Ted Christmas Special, I doodled this lovely little lady:
From there I switched subjects to one of my old favorites: unicorns. If you’ve been a reader of this blog for a while you may have noticed a subject pattern of mythical creatures (jackalopes, wampus cats, al-mi’raj, barnacle geese) and the fascination goes back to childhood.
So, my second sketch was of a shadhavar – a type of unicorn mentioned in Al-Qazwini’s Wonders of Creation. Yes – that’s right – this perennial favorite of mine is featured in the very same tome that introduced me, many years later, to the al-mi’raj. In fact a third single-horned creature, the karkadann, is also mentioned in the book as well.
You can browse the manuscript online here*. Another example of the same manuscript can be browsed here**.
Over the days I have found myself switching between figures and horned beasties. I compiled a list of all the unicorn-esque creatures I was aware of and started looking for new ones. Back when I was a kid, it was a lot harder to research (no Google or Wikipedia!), so I was excited to see what I could find.
And boy did I find something. A creature I had never hear of but sounded fantastic and, better still, originated from a location that has myth cycles that I am not very familiar with.
Enter the Bjarndýrakóngur.
To be continued…
al-Qazwīnī, Zakarīyā. “About This Collection: World Digital Library: Digital Collections: Library of Congress.” The Library of Congress, 1500, www.loc.gov.
al-Qazwīnī, Zakarīyā. “About This Collection: World Digital Library: Digital Collections: Library of Congress.” The Library of Congress, 1280, www.loc.gov.
