Linda, I'm completely with you on this.
The possibility of there being geographical representations (or something else) coded into the way things are drawn (and possibly even into the text) seems quite possible to me and you used exactly the picture that made me wonder about it (the pond critter where I removed some of the green paint to show the "flower" tail that looks like a strange flowing shape).
![[Image: VMSPond2.png]](https://voynichportal.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/VMSPond2.png)
After I You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., I remember looking at that for a long long time and thinking, "What is really going on here and why did they hide that (and other things) under the paint?"
FWIW, I'm pretty certain these pond critters were drawn by the same illustrator who drew the zodiac symbols. The confusion in hind-leg anatomy is the same as the zodiac animals and it's quite uncommon for this particular anatomical error to be made in quite this way. I collected thousands of examples of medieval animals and only found a VERY small number that show this strange propensity (one of which was in the Lauber manuscript I referenced You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).
As for whether the painter and the illustrator were the same person, I'm still unsure. I'm pretty certain there were at least two painters and I don't get the feeling that the sloppy one could have made these careful drawings. They are not expert drawings, the artistry is not good, but they are still moderately careful, within the skills of the person doing them.
The possibility of there being geographical representations (or something else) coded into the way things are drawn (and possibly even into the text) seems quite possible to me and you used exactly the picture that made me wonder about it (the pond critter where I removed some of the green paint to show the "flower" tail that looks like a strange flowing shape).
After I You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., I remember looking at that for a long long time and thinking, "What is really going on here and why did they hide that (and other things) under the paint?"
- Was it because the painter was obscuring something that was too obvious to the casual viewer, that might give something away?
- Was it a change of mind?
- Was it a reference to something related to the critter in some proverb or myth (like a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., for example)?
- Or was it because the painter didn't understand the significance of the illustrator's shapes and covered it up as anomalous or "unimportant"?
FWIW, I'm pretty certain these pond critters were drawn by the same illustrator who drew the zodiac symbols. The confusion in hind-leg anatomy is the same as the zodiac animals and it's quite uncommon for this particular anatomical error to be made in quite this way. I collected thousands of examples of medieval animals and only found a VERY small number that show this strange propensity (one of which was in the Lauber manuscript I referenced You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).
As for whether the painter and the illustrator were the same person, I'm still unsure. I'm pretty certain there were at least two painters and I don't get the feeling that the sloppy one could have made these careful drawings. They are not expert drawings, the artistry is not good, but they are still moderately careful, within the skills of the person doing them.