The following is not actually about birds Casper Essam
Why was this the first think I could think of to do a zine on you may ask? - The short answer is I’m not entirely sure. the long answer is that I really like fantasy related stuffalways have- for as long as I can remember, and I also used to love drawing birds too. Recently the two things have popped up in my life again, in that I’ve been playing dungeons and dragons (fantasy! lots of interesting creatures!) and the local crows and magpies where I live have been chilling on my balcony. Thus I combined these, and whilst looking through the d&d monster manual found the griffin entry. Seeing it, my first thought was “Nice! But what if there were different varieties?” and here we are.
Varieties of Griffins, By Casper Essam 2
Starting with puffins
Through finding references to draw these wonderful birds I cam to the conclusion that they’re really kind of weird.
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This was where I thought I had made mistakes. I wanted to find a type of cat that would be suited to a puffin griffin- so wouldn’t mind water and wasnt too big? I found one! Servals! The only the downside is that whilst puffins are kinda chunky birds, servals are very slender and elegant felines.
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Trying to do some complete studies of puffin-serval griffins, which was interesting for sure. Considering Servals live in African marshlands and savanna and puffins on the coast, they really could have gone either way for their living conditonsthis could open the door to even more varieties of them!
The double page spread over the page is my personal favourite study done for this. It seems right that the serval part of the griffin would match the puffin part colour wise, but theres something kind of endearing about having patches of the natural savanna like colour coming through.
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And here we are with my personal favourite kind of bird! Did you know that crows and ravens are thought to be one of the smartest types of bird?
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They’re able to solve puzzles and also are able to talk, like parrots, as well as able to mimic a few other creatures.
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I imagine these crow griffins would be a similar size to your average crow/raven, with the cat side of a domestic street cat.
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Sketches for griffins that could be, because I mean come on- owl griffins? Adorable.