Swamp Thing

This creature has migrated from the pristine lake it normally inhabits (in the painting I'm working on), to explore these mysterious & murky waters. It seems to have adapted fairly well!

S is for Sazae-oni

This week's entry for AlphaBeasts! is probably about as close as I've ever come to painting a pin-up. Not exactly my usual genre! :-O

Sazae-oni is a shape-shifting bakemono who lives inside a turban shell. Sometimes she disguises herself as a beautiful temptress in order to lure sailors to their... dismemberment, shall we say?

I decided to depict the moment afterwards, when she begins to reveal her true, rather crabby nature to her poor victims. After all, vamping it up can be fun, but sometimes a girl's just gotta relax & be herself.





Acrylic on illustration scanned from Wonders of the Heavens, Earth and Ocean, 1887 (with some Photoshop touch-ups in the grand pin-up tradition) ~5.5"x8.5"

Zoophyte

An undersea slacker of sorts, this curiotype need not stir from his seat to hunt for dinner. Rather, he lures passing prey with mesmerizing undulations of his graceful faux-fronds, then "welcomes little fishes in with gently smiling jaws."

To be honest, "zoophyte" was already becoming obsolete as a term of scientific classification when the background text was published in 1906, but I ask you, how could I resist ending the alphabet with a botano-beastie?

Photoshop with text from Chambers's Encyclopaedia, 1906.

Wavelength

It's a rare & beautiful thing when two individuals transcend the boundaries of self & begin to move through life on precisely the same wavelength. These synchronous swimmers were loosely inspired by the astonishingly graceful & romantic waltzing weedy sea dragons.

(Many thanks to Isaac for introducing me to these real-life oddments!)

By the way, you may note that this curiotype is a departure from the more arcane vocabulary of previous entries. That is because there was no W in classical Latin, the base language of most scientific terms. I'm rather glad since it gave me the perfect opportunity to celebrate sea dragons!

Photoshop with text from Steele's Fourteen Weeks of Physics, 1878.

Labiate

A sea creature influenced by lippy flowers may seem odd, but I ask you, is it (or anything) really any odder than the Sarcastic Fringehead!?

(Thanks to comic creator/arcane animal sleuth Isaac for introducing me to that one!)

This Curiotype is brought to you by the letter L.

Photoshop with text from Gray's Introduction to Structural & Systemic Botany, 1876

Welcome to Oddments & Curiosities!

Because it's my birthday & I'm allowed to do as I like, I'm daring myself to post an odd little creature of some kind on every odd day until my next birthday, or until I go completely mad, whichever comes first! Consider this an experiment in predictable unpredictability.

I hope you will add your field notes on these curious specimens. Feel free to speculate on their characteristics, cheer me on in my voyage of discovery, or hasten my madness by taunting me relentlessly, as you prefer.

Oddment 1 is a digital sketch for two of the characters in a large (for me) multi-character painting I'm working on. Photoshop with some acrylic-painty stuff thrown in.

p.s. Do you think I should name these things or merely catalog them?