There are a number of critters in the VMS that have sheeplike qualities, especially if one considers the wide range of sheep drawings one finds in the Middle Ages. I’m extremely busy right now, so I have to rush this out on my lunch break and get back to work, and can’t comment on these drawings in depth, or provide links, but I’ll put them out there for those who are interested…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Here is a small selection of critters in the VMS that have been likened to sheep in one way or another:<\/p>\n
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There are many ways one can analyze medieval sheep drawings based on drawing style and individual features. There are also some peculiar ones, such as sheep that look like horses or wolves, and sheep with leopard or dog faces. I also noticed that the tails of sheep were generally quite long and, in contrast to the fluffy tails of European drawings, sheep from a Bhagavad Gita illustration have skinny tails with tufts on the ends:<\/p>\n
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One can also look at the way the coats are drawn, some with dots, others with rough or regular lines, some with tufts. Note how each of the coats in the VMS drawings is different. Either this is a very creative person or the illustrator may have been looking at examples from different sources.<\/p>\n
Here are sheep textured with dots, spots, or curved and wavy lines:<\/p>\n
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Sometimes the texture is artistically shaped, blended, or drawn with different colors:<\/p>\n
<\/a>The most common way to draw the sheep bodies was with lines following the direction of the coat, especially tufts:<\/p>\n
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Sometimes the artist took this idea a step further and rendered the tufts as wave-like curlicues, scales, or calligraphic shapes. Some depicted practical considerations\u2014the drawing on the right has four deliberately different coat textures:<\/p>\n