•The Questing Beast•

#MythWorthy

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Hey! Newbie to this amino here, but worry not! For I am not new to the app in general, I know my way around things!

Either way, I drew this a few days ago, and thought this would be the appropriate place to drop it off!

See, I saw this thing in a book about mythological creatures, and I wanted to throw my own spin on it. The book is called:

Dracopedia, The Bestiary: An Artist’s Guide to Creating Mythical Creatures

And it was written by William O’Connor!

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There are many depictions of the Questing Beast, and I drew the version that was depicted in this book. However, one of the more famous depictions was in a tale of King Arthur.

Page 99 of this book states:

Enigmatic and mysterious, one of the most bizarre legendary creatures is the Questing Beast. Famous for its appearance in Thomas Malory’s “Le Morte d’Arthur,” the Questing Beast has been debated by Arthurian academics for centuries. Described as having the head and tail of a serpent combined with the body of a leopard and the legs of a stag, the Questing Beast appeared to King Arthur beside a river as he slept. This seems to imply that the beast’s appearance was perhaps a vision, giving the animal a mystical quality combining a dragon and a stag, two animals with deep symbolic meaning, possessing both the ferocity of a serpent and the natural majesty of a stag.

The origin of the Questing Beast’s name refers to the noise emitted by the creature’s belly. The sound has been described as a pack of dogs “questing” after prey.

And more about the Questing Beast can be found here, if you’re interested!

Anyway, moving onto the art!

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First the finished piece itself! My signature can be found on the lower left of the beast! “Lw,” which is just the shortened version of my name!

And here are the layers to prove it’s actually my art! I do use a lot of layers, I just don’t like anything mixing.

Then we’ll do a nice bit of backtracking, and get rid of layer after layer.

This is the flat color! Which was a lot easier than the shading.

Then we have the final line-art! Don’t be fooled though, there’s tons more. I had at least four sketches.

This was sketch #4! I just had to refine a few things in the final piece.

Sketch #3! Things were taking more shape here.

Sketch #2! I was getting an idea of what I wanted to do.

And sketch #1! It was the outline for what was going to take shape later on.

Now, I did those sketches and the line art afterward, finishing at 3am one night. However, it felt like it was missing something, which is when the second half of the line art came in.

This was sketch #4 for the tail end, which I added in the next day! It just needed some refining, and I decided to merge the body line-art with the tail so my layers wouldn’t be so messy.

Sketch #3! Again, it’s taking shape.

Sketch #2! Merely an idea of what I wanted.

Sketch #1! The outline!

For more proof, I do have a picture of my hand in front of my tablet! It’s easier having two devices, snrk.

And there we go!

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The app I used was ibisPaint! And my only tool was my finger!

The app also says I took 23 hours and 31 minutes, though I’m not sure if that’s correct or not. I did take a l o t of breaks in between.

Either way, g off! Hope to be back here with more art soon!

~Lw