Magpie's Nest

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.

"Take the injured with you! Aren't you heroes?"

-Suiryu, the Neo Leader

"Are YOU? You stood there and let them get their asses kicked."

-Garou

"Don't worry; I tweeted at Sneck and Max. They should be here to save us any second."

Genos and Sonic: turned the apartment upside down while Saitama went to the store

Grafting is really common. Most edible fruit trees, cultivated roses, some tomato plants etc are grafted onto a different rootstock as standard- you can control size that way, or make a useful but weak plant much stronger. As long as your two plants are related closely enough and you have cambium to cambium connection (cambium is the thin layer of green under the bark), you can do all sorts of weird shit - like a single tree that gives you plums, cherries, apricots, peaches and almonds.

Grafting compatibility is *not* associated with close relations between plants. There have been multiple theories as to how graft compatibility works, but so far no luck. Also some plants can be grafted one way but not the other around. Fascinating stuff. My own current theory is that it has something to do with nutrient availability and distribution, but that is untested. In my experience stem size (in grafting full shoots on rootstocks) is not really a determining factor, as long as there is overlap between the xylems and floems.

for anyone interested, i recommend reading these papers:

wulf et al 2020 on grafting compatibility

To kind of half-arsedly answer your question and then point you towards a much better resource, methods of grafting tend to come down to either the amount of material you have available for the top part (scion), the size, age and condition of the rootstock (stock), or the type of plant you’re working with.

If you’ve only got limited plant material for your scion then bud grafting (chip budding) is the way to go.

If your scion and stock are similar sizes then splice or whip and tongue method (like what @haveyoueverconsideredpiracy I think is describing and mostly what I’ve done) is your go-to.

If you’ve got conifer material, for example, you’d use a side veneer.

Next, "die" does mean "day," though nominative singular is "dies," i.e. "dies irae." It could be conjugated "die" if it was in ablative or locative case, but "die ad die" would mean something more like "day to day." "Ad" is in a "to" direction and "ab" is from, i.e. "ab urbis," and ablative case is used to indicate the movement of a thing. In short, "by" is not really a way to translate "ad"; we might want "per" here? (Through, by means of, etc.)

Bro I'm rewatching those old OPM Drama CD videos cause I'm just now insanely deep into my OPM fixation (which I also lowkey kinda wanna make an animatic/animation with it but thats another story) but when Genos dropped this line my jaw dropped ESPECIALLY with his current arc in the webcomic.

Bro they've been hinting about it for literal YEARS (10 YEARS TO BE EXACT).... ONE WHEN I CATCH YOU... OUUUUUHH ONE WHEN I CATCH YOU....

Here's the link to the specific one I'm talking about! I highly recommend watching them!! :))) (the Genos Training one was the only way I could get Zombieman content back in my day...)