but then I realised that same challenge would be infinitely more funny with folks who have atypical or horror OCs

adding to the pile of little colorful dragons i've been drawing lately

I wanted the birds to look like they were actually in the space so first thing after doing the draft was to do a lighting study

after that I covered the walls in letters in lieu of a projector/vr headset bc i have neither of those :) Then i take a picture of the section of wall and superimpose the lineart over top of it so I can pencil in the lines

et voila

GIVE IT UP FOR BIRD NUMBUH 5, THE CANADIAN GOOSE, Branta canadensis!!!!

bird 5/14, Bluejay, Cyanocitta cristata

birds 6 and 7: American Goldfinch, Spinus tristis, male and female

BIRD NUMBER 8, (yellow shafted) NORTHERN FLICKERRRRR, Colaptes auratus

genuinely made me start questioning my sanity around day 3, it's half the size the of the goose, WHY did it take me 4 days to finish??

Bird number 9: Red-tailed hawk, Buteo jamaicensis

my chains are broken i am FREE. although i did have a great deal of fun with this, the barring on the wings itself took me like four days and i am READY to move on

this was a week and a half of continuous work so please excuse me for getting a little emotional in the bg 🙏

BIRD NUMBER 10!!! The Male Mallard Duck, Anas platyrhynchos

the male and female ones are gonna be posted separately bc they're taking a lot longer lol but yea! super happy i was able to capture the iridescent green of the head, i found metallic green and blue paint at a craft store that really made his head POP. it looks better in person i promise

ALSO!! As this is the 10th one, BIG announcement. The end is in sight!!!!! I plan to finish within the next 3 weeks and there will be a small dedication ceremony/ unveiling happening at the library to commemorate its completion on the 16th of May. If you live in the Western New York region and want to check it out for yourself shoot me a dm!

aaaand another one bites the duck,

we're movin right along with bird numero 11!! The lady Mallard!! Anas platyrhyncos

power couple that they are, here's bird number 12 and 13,

the Northern Cardinals, Cardinalis cardinalis

and NOW that they are complete, ITS GO TIME, in the next five days (library's closed for mother's day 😭😭) i need to have the GBH fully rendered, the names of the birds vectored, weeded, masked, applied to the wall, and then painted, plus additional cattails throughout. I may be able to get away with just getting the GBH done in time for the unveiling and then just have the names and cattails added later, but i'm gonna really try to get it all done in time. BUT, i have a plan. Part of why i take so long on these is because i really am just figuring it out as I do it lmao. there have been many a time where i am sitting on top of the ladder googling "how to paint birds" but I think if i take the time tomorro to do all that figuring out how to approach it beforehand, this will go a lot faster. I may also recruit some of my artist friends to help with the placing of the names... hrmm we'll see.

Anyways, shout out to the librarian who tracked down exactly the thing i needed so i could figure out where to place the highlights in my birds eyes, ur the real mvp

Bird number 14 out of 14,

The Great blue heron, Ardea herodius

thank you to everyone who reached out or got excited about this project, it genuinely gave me the fuel i needed to keep going. In total, the 480+ total hrs it took me to cover this wall pales in comparison to how long its expected to spend on there, hopefully imparting a sense of beauty and love for the natural world to the next generation and here's hoping i'm only getting started with these.

"how dare you say we piss on the poor" in response to someone misinterpreting your post

"_ isnt gonna fuck you" for suck up behavior

"woah. should we tell everyone? should we throw a party?" for who the fuck cares

"and what if the world was made of pudding" for when would this ever matter.

"and sharks are smooth both ways" for a group of people heatedly arguing with 1 guy who is fucking with them all

“30-50 wild hogs” for someone making ABSURD excuses for violence.

“what were YOU doing at the devils sacrament” for how do you know that without being a part of it.

“anyone in this thread smoke weed” for the shit you people are saying is so off topic this might as well be a general discussion forum

“dogs are boys and cats are girls” for ooh ur mindset did not grow past 4th grade, huh

“color theory in a childrens hospital” for bending over backwards to not agree that YEA, that thing Came Off Weird

“you are a tar pit” for someone finding any reason to respond with outrage.

“is the __ in the room with us right now?” for I Don’t Think That’s Real.

“bean soup? im allergic to beans!” for ik this doesn’t work for you, but that’s not a flaw. not everything can be for you.

I just worry I’m missing things others are getting and I wanna actually be able to describe why I like certain things without sounding like a broken record.

I can’t analyze to save my life but I wanna learn

I think the place to start is with the consciousness that all media is a collection of choices. All of it. Everything that is in a piece of media is a decision that someone made, from the big themes to the individual pixels on the screen in a video game, those are only there because someone made a decision that caused them to be there.

With that as the foundation, you can start asking the needful questions.

I find a useful place to start asking questions is "why X rather than Y?"

In any given piece of media you want to analyze, pick a choice that is being made and imagine what it would be like if a different (or opposite) choice had been made.

Say, in Star Wars, what if Luke had decided to join his father and overthrow the Emperor? If the movie had made that choice, how would it have changed the film? What would it feel like is the point the movie is trying to make then? What if Vader was not Luke's father?

Or, what if the good guys' lightsabers were red and the bad guys' sabers were blue? What does that change? What are the things you instinctively associate with those colors, why would swapping them around feel wrong? (or would it actually feel really right? If so, why?)

You can do this for the very big questions, like themes and entire plots, but you can also do it in the very minute. Read a poem and ask yourself why the author picked this word rather than one of its synonyms. Maybe it's for the meter, maybe it's for the tone, maybe it's to match vocabulary. Imagining a different word or a different phrase in the poem, how would that change how it feels to read? What it feels like to hear it spoken out loud?

The answer to many questions you'll ask about a piece of media are entirely banal. Like, in 3D animation, some things look the way they do because that's just how a particular software suite handles that particular task. Light reflections, physics simulation, motion blur, etc. Plenty of video games look the way they do in no small part because they are built within the constraints of their engines. Sometimes paintings have the colors they do not because an artiste is imbuing every choice with profound meaning, but because those are the colors the painter could afford, or which were available at the time. And those banal answers are still useful, even if they don't sound deep.

But the important bit is, the more questions you ask (however banal), the more answers you'll learn, and the more you'll understand about the mediums you're interested in, and the more you'll become able to interpret the choices that are made and work towards building an understanding and constructing a reading.

If you start from the understanding that everything (everything! literally every single thing!) in a piece of media is a choice, a decision that could have been made differently, and you ask yourself why it wasn't, you'll be in a decent position to start to interrogate the art you enjoy.

Outside of that, there are lots of books on art appreciation, and tons of people doing videos on media literacy on YouTube. I think Crash Course has some high-school level courses in English and Theatre and Film on their channel, which can be another good place to start.

Also, just, generally... Media literacy is a skill, not a trait. It's a thing which you practise doing, and in practising it you inevitably become better at it. Nobody starts out good at it, literally everybody is improving with practise all the time, and literally the only way to get any better is to try to do it to the best of your ability as much as possible, working the muscle so it will start to grow.

use overdrive, libby, hoopla, cloudlibrary, and kanopy instead of amazon and audible.

use firefox instead of chrome or opera (both are made with chromium, which blocks functionality for ad-blockers. firefox isn't based on chromium).

use mega or proton drive instead of google drive.

get rid of bloatware

use libreoffice instead of microsoft office suite

use vetted sites on r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH for free movies, books, games, etc.

use trakt or letterboxd instead of imdb.

use storygraph instead of goodreads.

use darkpatterns to find mobile game with no ads or microtransactions

use ground news to read unbiased news and find blind spots in news stories.

use mediahuman or cobalt to download music, or support your favorite artists directly through bandcamp

make youtube bearable by using mtube, newpipe, or the unhook extension on chrome, firefox, or microsoft edge

use search for a cause or ecosia to support the environment instead of google

use thriftbooks to buy new or used books (they also have manga, textbooks, home goods, CDs, DVDs, and blurays)

use flashpoint to play archived online flash games

find books, movies, games, etc. on the internet archive! for starters, here's a bunch of David Attenborough documentaries and all of the Animorphs books

burn your music onto cds

use pdf24 (available online or as a desktop app) instead of adobe

use unroll.me to clean your email inboxes

use thunderbird, mailfence, countermail, edison mail, tuta, or proton mail instead of gmail

remove bloatware on windows PC, macOS, and iOS X

remove bloatware on samsung X

use pixelfed instead of instagram or meta

use NCH suite for free software like a file converter, image editor, video editors, pdf editor, etc.

feel free to add more alternatives, resources or advice in the reblogs or replies, and i'll add them to the main post <3

The hoodie as a veil. 

Weisman cigarettes

Each of them is haloed by an advertisement sticker. 

No Vacancy sign on the motel. 

Dove sticker over Maria’s head. 

Neon sign with a star symbol also over Maria’s head. 

The crown over the ‘Dave’s City Motel’ sign. “New Manger.”

The sign behind Jose’s elbow likely says ‘Herod.’

The wee little plant growing through the cracks at their feet. 

It’s like a New Testament ‘I Spy.’ I love it!

Ugh.

Maria sitting on a donkey

Shepherd Watches advertisement in the newspaper