#american bison
bestiary: american bison
not to mistaken with buffalo, these guys can weigh a tonne but can run at speeds of nearly sixty five kilometers per hour. they eat grass though so they won’t be coming after you for a meal, only if, you know, you piss them off. i didn’t know that the males and females generally live separately save for mating season. like many a good male, they fight over the ladies but they don’t go to the point of killing eachother. sensible, right? another fun fact is that their hides are so well insulated that snow can accumulate on their backs not melt. bison bison in moleskine.
i started drawing an american bison for this bestiary of mine and started with a photo that i thought had an interesting perspective to start with. i’m trying to keep up with experiments while still working on my actual projects. so i took a gander at illustration friday’s theme and it is, weirdly enough, perspective. i’ve been wanting to try taking ball point pen drawings further as the basis for an illustration instead of using brush and ink so i thought i’d give it a go.
i realised too late in this experiment that it looks a bit barren without any real sort of background. i thought about incorporating whatever symbolic imagery that bison might have in different cultures. it seems that they’re mostly used as state symbols or in flags. so this is a flag of sorts, but the blue is supposed to suggest the sky.
if you can imagine yourself on the plain and you’re sharing opposing perspectives with this animal, your perspective might be that this is such a magnificent animal. his disposition might suggest that his perspective might be that he doesn’t like you on his land. apparently these are really dangerous animals to be around; they can outrun us and will attack if provoked. so you’re being warned as well.
not sure if i really like the result but it was worth a shot. i’ll probably give this a few more tries to decide once and for all. the original drawing is also below.