Author: Anika Burgess / Source: Atlas Obscura
Every culture has its own distinctive mythological beasts. In Brazil, there’s the Headless Mule, a cursed creature whose decapitated head hovers above a fire-spewing neck as it gallops across the country.
From Japan, the Kotobuki is a Zodiac Frankenstein’s monster: it consists of all 12 signs, from the nose of the rat to the tail of the snake. Peru has the Huayramama, which looks like a vast snake plus the billowing hair and face of an old woman.With such rich and broad source material to draw from, the artist Iman Joy El Shami-Mader has lately been pursuing one very particular goal: she wants to illustrate as many mythical beasts as she can find. Since October 2017, El Shami-Mader has been illustrating one such creature a day, which she then features on her Instagram account. To keep up a steady supply of beasts to draw, El Shami-Mader initially worked from books. “It all started with the book Phantasmagoria—which is great—but there are many creatures that are only mentioned in passing or without any description at all,” she says. So she ordered more books, researched online, and tried her local library. “I’m from a tiny town in the Alps, so other than local creatures, there was little to be found.”
Lately she’s decided to try to crowdsource ideas to keep her project going. Through Instagram, she’s asked her followers to send stories and descriptions of mythical beasts she’s still missing.
Her illustrated bestiary now spans mythologies from around the world and across a variety of time periods, and even includes the odd fictional character (she has a porg from Star Wars: The Last Jedi and an Owlbear from Dungeons & Dragons).Atlas Obscura spoke with El Shami-Mader about her project, the challenges of depicting mythical creatures, and the appeal of the lovable Squonk. If you’d like to suggest a creature, email her at mythical.creaturologist@gmail.com.
Where did the idea for this project come from?
It actually started as a stress-relief strategy and ‘self-challenge’ last fall. I was working five jobs and felt extremely drained and worn-out all the time. I really needed something to balance out the lack of creative expression I was feeling and to get my mind off things, at least for an hour a day.
A few years back I did a series of fairytale illustrations and came across many amazing creatures, like the Bøyg in Per Gynt. Since I always wanted to deepen my knowledge about these creatures, I ordered the book Phantasmagoria by Terry Beverton and it arrived on my doorstep on September 30, just in time for me to begin a daily monster-drawing challenge I’d set myself for the month of October. I started to use my lunch breaks to have a quick snack and do a drawing of a creature each day. I was fairly sure I would give up after a week, but it really helped with the stress; for an hour or two each day, all that was on my mind was bringing a creature to paper, nothing else. It was also great to learn about a new monster each day, so when October was over, I didn’t really want to stop.
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