Work and SB Project: Sketch 37

I’ve had to do a number of animal studies recently for my work with Feytouched Studios. I don’t know that I’d ever draw a bear before, and don’t have much practice with eagles or ruminants, so these were all good learning experiences. The bottom right one is basically what one of the finished emblems will be, after I refine and color it, of course.

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Tunga penetrans, also known as the Chigoe Flea, jigger, and sometimes chigger, are nasty little things. Not to be confused with chiggers (harvest mites, which will be coming up in a couple pages) in temperate areas, Chigoe Fleas are endemic to the tropics – particularly South and Central America and the Caribbean.  They parasitize mammals, including humans, and are usually found on feet and sometimes hands. Females start out much slimmer than this, but once they find a suitable host, they burrow under the skin, leaving a small hole though which they breathe and get rid of excrement. Feeding on the host’s blood, the female will get larger as eggs develop inside her. Growing up to a centimeter across beneath the host’s skin causes terrible discomfort. In some places, people’s feet are so full of Chigoe Flea sores that they cannot walk. Eventually the female lays her eggs and they fall to the ground to hatch and grow into new fleas. She will die and be sloughed off with the host’s skin.

 

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