As I've explained in my pitiful FAQ, I made up these fantastic beasts when unicorns got co-opted by the marketing people, who raised the saccharine levels to toxic heights. As you can see by looking at the image below, their horns were originally rather straight. I couldn't tell you, at this distance, what prompted me to adopt the peculiar recurve, something like ram's horns, that they have now, except perhaps a desire to make it look less ‘unicorny’.

This shirt, which I believe I made in my early college years, was therefore done after Thassar and Catarina, which I did in high school, and the former shows the influence my discover of Needlearts and their varied product lines were having on my pallette: I incorporated Deutsch ‘marlitt’, extremely shiny and silky, for many of the wing feathers (the outer three ranks, gold, kelly green and turquoise—cobalt, purple, fuscia, and mustard are cotton DMC as you can see in the detail, below) which on this beastie were inspired by my concepts of Birds of Paradise.

In order to save time and give a better sense of fur, I used an openwork technique that is sometimes called thread painting, though my stitches are not really the free-style cross-stitch that term traditionally connotes. The legs and face are green because those are scales. Thus, the varied forms the creature's keratin production can take gives me a very wide scope for texture and color. I thought and still feel the wings are most successful part of the piece.

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.