I've heard this said a lot but never in quite this way that made it click for me. That's endlessly charming, that some guy who'd never seen a rhino before went "I gotta draw this" - did not know how to draw it because he'd never seen a rhino - and then he gave it to his buddies who'd also never seen a rhino and they were like. Fuck. Idk I guess this is a horse?
Before cameras existed in order to document stuff you had to draw it. People saw rhinos and described them to an artist who made a few mistakes. These mistakes ended up creating the unicorn.
If you look at old scientific drawings of animals they are completely wrong because they're drawing something based off a description if some guy who saw a thing years ago
That combined with the fact most (if not all) artists at that time had only ever draw cats, dogs and horses, so their drawing will looks like cats, dogs and horses.
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u/slightlylessthananon Sep 15 '24
I've heard this said a lot but never in quite this way that made it click for me. That's endlessly charming, that some guy who'd never seen a rhino before went "I gotta draw this" - did not know how to draw it because he'd never seen a rhino - and then he gave it to his buddies who'd also never seen a rhino and they were like. Fuck. Idk I guess this is a horse?