When Kit was commissioned to paint magical portraits, he was usually used to them being of human people; wizards, witches, and wix. That didn't mean he didn't get the odd request every so often to paint someone or something else, however.
On one such occasion, a magical zoo that also provided care for injured and orphaned magical beasts commissioned Kit to paint portraits of some of the creatures in their care. The zoo also promoted conservation efforts and offered educational programs so they had asked if Kit could paint the portraits in order to aid in educating others regarding the zoo's residents. While some creatures could be seen in captivity, many were only kept temporarily by the zoo before being re-released into their natural habitat once they were well enough to survive on their own again. They tried not to keep too many magical animals captive if they were still capable of living on their own in the wild, but still wanted to teach the public about them, so they needed portraits to show them what they were like. For that reason, the zoo director hoped Kit could capture their likeness while the zoo still had them so that visitors could learn about, see, and identify said animals long after they were no longer under the zoo's care.
There were a number of dangerous creatures that the zoo couldn't afford to expose to the public, either, for fear of the public's saftey, but if it was only one person - Kit's saftey - they had to worry about, they thought the could guarantee that for as long as Kit said it would take him to paint the creatures. There was an Acromantula, though a relatively small one, that was missing a few legs, and Kit was told they got to be much bigger than the three-foot-tall one he was allowed to paint. That one didn’t seem too much different from a tarantula, but to be able to view the detail of things like the hairs on its body at a much larger scale was quite an experience. He could even see all eight of its eyes and its mouth parts clicking.

Painting the difference between a manticore, a chimera, and a sphinx was fun because though all of them had obviously lion parts, it was their other parts that made them so different. The sphinx had a human head and face, for example, but a lion’s body. Comparatively, a manticore had a lion’s body and head but its face was human and, unlike the sphinx, it had a scorpion tail. Both the sphinx and the manticore were capable of human speech, but probably not human reasoning in the same way humans applied it because they were very violent when the other was near and would yell at each other. Fortunately, the zookeepers seemed aware of this and wouldn’t allow them to say in the same vicinity for very long. Their magical portraits, however, did not seem to appreciate even being painted next to each other and were constantly snarling, snapping, and hurling insults at one another once Kit performed the spell on the paintings to allow them to come to life.

He wondered for a bit if that was a mistake, but his commissioner – the zoo director – assured him it was necessary for visitors to get an idea of how dangerous the creatures were despite being able to speak in a language humans could understand. Sometimes, he had explained to Kit, humans fell for the deception that if creatures could speak the human language, they could be reasoned with like humans could, but as Kit had seen himself, that was not the case. If each creature’s portrait only interacted with humans, it might have seemed to be civil, causing people to forget they were not tame creatures or people with whom one could converse with normally. Visitors needed to be reminded at all times that beasts like that were rated so dangerously by the Ministry of Magic Classification system for a reason.

Aside from the manticore that so closely resembled the sphinx, however, there was another type of manticore Kit was asked to paint called an insectoid manticore. That breed looked more like a monstrous scorpion than a lion with a crimson, quill-covered body, two pincers, and a pair of antennae. The antennae had ends that split into three parts each to reveal thin tendrils that could sense and grab prey from a distance. They also had three stingers, the largest of which was the middle one and could shoot fire like a fire crab or blast-ended skrewt. Kit was also shown a juvenile which was reddish but not crimson like its adult counterpart. It also only had one stinger and no quills. Insectoid manticores were sensitive to light and could grow to the size of dragons, but luckily the one Kit was asked to paint was only about five feet tall.

It seemed a lot of creatures Kit was asked to paint were also to show people comparisons such as the insectoid manticore versus the mainstream one or the mainstream manticore versus the sphinx. This helped with people’s education so they didn’t accidentally misidentify a creature if they encountered it which could have been a fatal mistake, like trying to deal with a hippogriff versus a griffin, who each responded in different ways to the same behavior. Fairies, doxies, and pixies had to each be dealt with differently, too, but they couldn’t be shown next to each other, so Kit had to paint them separately, but on the same canvas. Since it was difficult to show the real things side by side, having moving, magical paintings to show how the creatures behaved differently and so that people could compare their differences when they were seen right next to each other was ideal. Kit, having been born to two muggles but having been fascinated with magical creatures of all kinds ever since he was little, was also learning a lot and enjoying himself. He was certain he wouldn’t have been able to get so close to or even see some of the beasts he was allowed to as an artist for the zoo if he had never become a magical portrait painter.

Some creatures were less dangerous than the acromantula, manticores, chimera, and sphinx, but they posed other difficulties. The occamy, for instance, had to be painted in something of a cramped space because they were choranaptyxic and would grow or shrink depending on how much space they were given to take up. This provided a bit of a challenge for Kit, but he relished it and was glad he could change the color of his paints through magic without using a wand because it significantly reduced the amount of painting supplies he had to carry with him everywhere or used while creating his magical portraits. Trying to paint the demiguise was naturally tricky since the beast could see the future and turn invisible, but since it seemed to realize Kit was trying to paint it for its own benefit and to educate others about it, it allowed him to do so, only turning invisible every now and then to be playful. The flying seahorses were so quick that Kit had to sneak a picture of them on his phone in order to see one still long enough to paint it, but he quickly deleted the photos after, not wanting to get in trouble with the ministry for the risk of exposing magical creatures to muggles.

The kelpie was one of the biggest nuisances to Kit, particularly due to his’s intense dislike of getting wet. The animal kept changing shape quite often so that the artist was barely able to sketch one version of it before it would reveal to him a new form. Worse yet was that this one seemed to delight in dousing Kit and his canvas in water as it surfaced from its habitat or came up on land, sometimes only showing parts of itself before resubmerging under water. A watching zookeeper noticed Kit’s frustration despite the painter’s ever-present grin because the metamorphmagus’ own shape would change with his variance of emotion and growing frustration; his black hair turned green or blue or teal, his mismatched eyes became a horse’s eyes once in a while, or a cat’s, and his skin sometimes took on a scaley or once even a slimey texture. Amused but understanding, the zookeeper laughed as he pointed Kit’s changes out – because of course Kit himself hadn’t noticed or seen himself changing while trying to paint – and asked if the miserable painter would have liked some help. Kit confessed that some help would have been nice, so the zookeeper managed to skillfully coax the kelpie out of the water and to keep a typical kelpie form of an equine shape with a bulrush mane long enough for Kit to finish sketching and painting it.

After Kit thanked the zookeeper profusely, the kelpie-handler, who it seemed had a special fondness for the creatures, told him that the Loch Ness Monster, which was supposed to be one of the most famous sea serpents in the world, was actually discovered to be a kelpie whose favored form was a sea serpent rather than a genuine serpent. That earned a good deal of laughter from Kit whose bitter mood soon evaporated as he was able to make peace with the kelpie who had been such a menace to him. He himself knew, after all, how it felt to want to be something other than yourself and to be the master of how the world perceived you even if you had to deceive the world.

Not all paintings were challenging. Some were almost boring, like the paintings he did of various types of eggs and different sorts of feathers or shed skins and carapaces. But after all the excitement and exasperation with the kelpie, Kit was glad to have something a little more stationary, simple, and easy to paint. There were the green eggs of the diricawl, the valuable, molten-looking eggs of the ashwinder, and the tiny eggs of the golden snidget, along with many more. Among the feathers he had to paint were those of the greenish-black augurey, the firey phoenix, and the blue, enigmatic jobberknoll, all of which were valuable in their own right. At one point he was asked to paint nifflers and was allowed to interact with them personally, but warned about their penchant for stealing shiny things, of which Kit was well-aware. He had to remove all his earrings, his collar, his belts and boots with all their metallic buckles, and his rings and leave them with one of the zookeepers for safe-keeping before entering the niffler enclosure. Once he did, he brought with him some gleaming chocolate coins the zoo director had given him permission to gift to the shiny-loving thieves. While they were busy searching him for more chocolate coins, Kit did his best to paint them and their joy each time they discovered a new treasure. His metallic nail polish was of fascination to them and they tried their best to steal his paint when he changed the color of what he was painting with to metallic pigments, but he was quick to change the paint color back once they did and the nifflers soon lost interest.

Eventually, Kit was brought to see a zouwu, which intensely fascinated him in how large, powerful, and quick it was, but also how gentle and playful, like a giant cat. He watched the way it maneuvered and apparated similar to wizards and diricawls, doing his best to capture its magnificence and grace despite its large size as he painted it. It played with one of the zookeepers as they waved a cat toy around, causing Kit to laugh. It was a nice, peaceful way to end the day.

All in all, the whole collection of portraits that the zoo director commissioned from Kit took a few months, but at last they were all finished and it was like they had a little menagerie captured with some brush strokes in paint and canvases. The painter was paid well and, more importantly, was proud of the work he had done to the best of his abilities. He felt good knowing he had contributed to the education of young and old wix alike and that, hopefully, his paintings and newfound experiences that had accompanied those paintings would continue to assist the zoo in teaching the public about magical creatures for years to come.