Disney Style Chimera

In Greek Mythology the Chimera is a fire breathing creature with the body of a lioness, a tail that ends with a snakes head and a goat's head coming out of it's back.  It's siblings are Cerberus and the Hydra.   The term Chimera has developed a more general meaning of "impossible" or "foolish" fantasy.  There is also something known as a genetic Chimera where one organism can have multiple sets of genes, which is utterly fascinating to me, a person who is a Chimera is technically more than one person, there is much more to it and if you want to learn about chimerism go here.  I started drawing this Chimera in the style I used for my alphabet, but then I had a lightbulb go off...a lion, a goat, a snake....those were all in Disney movies right?  And so I made a Disney-fied Chimera, because that's the kind of thing crazy people who draw do, lol.

"U" is for Unicorn...

Who didn't see that one coming? According to wikipedia "A unicorn (from Latin unus 'one' and cornu 'horn') is a mythological creature described as having a long, straight horn extending from its forehead." Well, really who doesn't know that? Something I didn't know however was that Unicorns are not found in Greek mythology...they are found in Greek natural history, because the Greeks were absolutely convinced Unicorns were real and living in India.

"T" is for Troll

For T I resisted the temptation to make T for Teresa and instead made a Troll. According to Wikipedia "Numerous tales about trolls are recorded, in which they are frequently described as being extremely old, very strong, but slow and dim-witted. They are sometimes described as man-eaters and as turning to stone upon contact with sunlight." Growing up one of my favorite cartoons was "David the Gnome" so my interpretation of trolls is heavily influenced by that, which is actually very close to the Scandinavian style, I'm quite happy with the result.

"S" is for Satyr

For today's letter I chose Satyr, but I took some liberties...namely I chose to go with the Roman adaptation of Satyrs into more faun like creatures rather than the original more horse like Satyrs from the Greeks....mainly because it is the more popular version and I have already drawn a Centaur.

"Q" is for Quetzalcoatl

Yeah, I kinda had to reach for this one....you may be surprised to know there are not many mythical creatures starting with the letter Q.   Quetzalcoatl is a Mesoamerican deity whose name comes from the Nahuatl language and has the meaning of "feathered-serpent".