This week’s challenge is a little different & not just because I delayed it until I finished the panther post!
I thought instead of drawing a mystery creature, people could try recolouring the Saddest Panther, either using the template below or creating your own version. It doesn’t have to be cheerful (you can try to capture something that rivals the misery of the original if that’s where your artistic vision takes you), but in the interests of historical accuracy, maybe flip a coin to decide whether your version has spots or not?
Here are the relevant bits from Pliny and Bartholomaeus Anglicus
again for inspiration:
“The panther and the tiger are nearly the only animals that
are remarkable for a skin distinguished by the variety of its spots; whereas
others have them of a single colour, appropriate to each species […] The spots
of the panther are like small eyes, upon a white ground. It is said that all
quadrupeds are attracted in a most wonderful manner by their odour, while they
are terrified by the fierceness of their aspect; for which reason the creature
conceals its head, and then seizes upon the animals that are attracted to it by
the sweetness of the odour. It is said by some, that the panther has, on the
shoulder, a spot which bears the form of the moon; and that, like it, it
regularly increases to full, and then diminishes to a crescent.”
&
“[T]he Panthera and the Tigre bée
most dressed with divers speckles and divers coulours […] And all foure
footed beasts have liking to beholde the diverse coulours of the Panthera and
Tygres, but they be a fearde of the horriblenesse of theyr heads, and therfore
they hide their heads, and toll the beastes to them with fayrenesse of the other
deale of the body.”
