Ever thought about medieval ships?

Two of my stories required drawing medieval ships. Above are a few of the images I found for references. I like the one with the flying fish best!

St. Modomnoc only had to sail across the Irish Sea in his boat... Good thing too, or his bees would have gotten too tired, and maybe drowned.

St. Brendan, on the other hand, had to spend seven years sailing his ship. It must have been stinky and crowded, but at least they stopped often in wondrous places... including their yearly Easter mass on the back of a whale! Here's a detail of his ship, anchored around the whale's tail.

Bee Inspired!

On the wall of my studio is a pastel drawing by my friend, Francesca. It combines a quote from St. Ambrose with images of bees. Ambrose is another saint who had a bee encounter. As an infant, bees supposedly swarmed in and out of his mouth without stinging him. People took this as a good sign -- that he would have a honeyed tongue and be a great talker... which came true. He became archbishop of Milan and had the guts to threaten the Roman emperor, Theodosius, with excommunication after a massacre. Theodosius was forced to do months of public penance before Ambrose readmitted him to the Eucharist.

The words on the drawing read (capitalized as in the art):
QUANTUM PHYSICS: "it is Not possible to predict the OUTCOME of aNY situatioN."
"god is the author of NatuRe; NatuRe CaN be chaNged." AMBrOSe

When it came time to draw the bees for St. Modomnoc's story in Holy Crocodile, all I had to do was look to the left of my drawing table for inspiration.