CHAPTER 1 | MYTHICAL CREATURES
In 1806, German illustrator Friedrich Bertuch created a children’s picture book in which he illustrated mythical creatures such as the griffin, the phoenix, the unicorn, the dragon and the mermaid. Mythical creatures always evoke exciting or romantic stories!
A mythical creature almost always consists of a combination of different animals, sometimes even half-human and half-animal. Therefore, a mythical creature can have different types of skin within a single body: smooth, scaled, hairy, spiky, and/or feathered.
Anyone who thought mythical creatures like dragons only appeared in ancient stories is mistaken. The Shoyrus, for example, are dragons that fly around in Neopia, a digital world, created around 2004 by an American illustrator Arthur Conley. Mythical creatures appear in all eras and cultures.
Slightly less cute is the African/Asian dragon below, eating an elephant
Exercise: Find/choose a mythical creature to draw, or invent one yourself. You can also write the creature’s name in decorative letters at the bottom of your drawing, or create an elegant border like in the example above.