UBLUBLU

Purpleheart Wood: Peltogyne genus, native to Central and South American rainforests. Freshly cut it's light brown, then turns into rich shades of purple. It turns brown in UV light so it has to be finished with a UV inhibitor to keep those gorgeous colors.

Namnu (various): A type of precious wood found in China/South Asia, sourced from various different species of trees, hence the different examples shown here. High grades of the wood are known for the optical effect shown in the video. Unfortunately the types of trees that produce the wood are all critically endangered, which is why the examples shown are all items or pillars or fragments of pieces. The species are all strictly protected and new trees cannot be harvested.

That example in the video is just that one video that goes around with the inside of a tree that's been struck burning while it still stands, but sometimes trees that have been struck by lightning and are cut down can have neat burn patterns in the wood (example), as the lightning goes to ground, so some people might want that. Who am I to judge.

Chicken-blood vine wood: Species is Spatholobus suberectus and it's only that bright when it's cut, it dries to a more woody color. Here's a page with examples of what the wood looks like when it's dried and some things made with it.

Amber wood: This one took a while. There's a video out there claiming this is "petrified amber wood". That's not possible, I'm a geologist I would know. Since the video is in Chinese originally I presume, "amber wood" must be a translated local name. It's sandalwood, which has that gorgeous bright red color. Even tracked down the video the clip is taken from. "Chandan wood" is another name for sandalwood. Which smells amazing.

Rosewood: The most well known of the woods here in my opinion. There's a number of rosewoods, all in various shades of pinks and reds. True rosewoods are from the genus Dalbergia. Sadly they're all endangered, but illegal harvesting continues.

Purple hainan huanghuali: Dalbergia odorifera, the Chinese rosewood.

Pink oak - Likely pink ivory (Phyllogeiton zeyheri). You need a permit to cut down one of these trees, but it really is that pink. One of the most expensive woods in the world, up there with sandalwood.

Burmese huanghuali: Rosewood...3! This is either Dalbergia oliveri or Pterocarpus indicus, but given that Pterocarpus indicus is descripted as having purplish heartwood, I'm guessing it's Dalbergia oliveri. Though it's not a true rosewood, Pterocarpus indicus is also sadly endangered.

And Gaston is NOT a woman-driven fantasy. Gaston is a male wish fulfillment fantasy. Gaston is not what women want, he is what men want to be. He is hyper-masculinity to an extreme degree, dripping with sexism and testosterone. The fact that men think that Gaston is what women want says an awful lot about those men. 

While I don’t want to generalize, female fans tend to prefer a very different kind of male hero. We like the Rogers, the Milos, the Hercules. Genuinely kind, often awkward men who are sometimes vulnerable and respectful to women. 

“The fact that men think that Gaston is what women want says an awful lot about those men.”

“Not only is Gaston not a woman’s fantasy, he’s literally a woman’s horror story.”

He’s fun. He’s considerate. He’s nice. He’s a bit silly, which shows that he’s not so stuck on his sense of self-importance that he can’t laugh at himself. As opposed to Gaston, who’s very full of himself, vain, and just generally a shitty person.

So nintendy is tryin to cover its ass on account of it givin all yous freaks ab-see-lute freedom to make DICK CITY a reality? yous wannas be able to upload your screenshots from your switch? Yous need to get one of these bad boys:

then you take the microSD card outta the switch and do one of these

den yous go like so

den i think yous can handle da rest ;)

anyways if anyone asks, you were never here

*slinks away into the darkness*

*slinks back from the darkness*

okays okays, i hear yous der in the back, yeah theres the...

(ominous pause)

other way

(distant rumble of thunder, wind starts whistling)

looks like we gotta spit some about the "usb-c to usb-a" cable maneuver

so if you know a guy who knows a guy who can put one of these in yer hot lil hands-

den ya gotta do the ol "one two skeedoo-it" if you know watta i mean

then you do like so

then you give 'em the ol applesauce

don't say i never did nothin for y-

WHAT DA

DAMMIT YOUS WAS FOLLOWED!

SHIT ITS THE BIG MAN!

RUN FER IT, HE'S THE MEANIST SONAVA BITCH THIS SIDE OF-

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.

they are going to ask for discounts on the citadel even tho they have enough money to buy everything….

If someone gives advice that's worded as "when no better options are available, [solution] is the best option", it means that doing that particular solution is better than not doing anything. It does not mean that this solution is better than all other options, best choice at all times. All the better options that you can think of that a person should do instead are already implied to be unavailable in the "when no better options are available"-part.

When something is stated in past tense, that implies that this thing is no longer this way at the current moment. "Past tense" means that it happens in the past, which implies that it has stopped happening. If someone says "I thought myself well-educated on the subject", the past tense implies that they are now aware that they were not, in fact, well-educated on the subject. You do not need to tell them this.

A person saying something in passive tense is not stating that they personally do or believe whatever the statement is. Saying "at one point, it was thought", means that there has been, at some point, unnamed other people, who thought this thing, and therefore this has a distinct nuance difference to "I think", which means that the person saying this is also the one thinking it.

The words "common", "most" and "the average" refer to a majority of a population, but not the whole population. That is a different thing than "all" and "everything". If someone says "most dogs have four legs", but you know two dogs who have three legs each, saying so does not disprove the previous person's point, as "most" is a different word than "all". It's a different word that changes what the sentence means.

When someone says a sentence, you should always assume that every word in it is important for the context. If you don't know what a word means, you should look it up to find out what it means, instead of skipping over it and assuming that it isn't important. "Strict and irreconcilable parenting styles are inherently traumatic" means a different thing than "strict parenting styles are inherently traumatic". Adding or removing one word can sometimes change the whole sentence, and you can't just skip the ones that you don't know.

I'm going to try it.

First, let me preface this with something very important: you can treat all of this advice as SECOND-DRAFT ADVICE. It is so much easier to rewrite this kind of stuff once you have words on the page. Telling yourself the first draft is totally appropriate and acceptable.

What we’re talking about here are FILTER WORDS (and to some degree verbs of being). Yes, “thought” words are included. But so are “heard, saw, looked, tasted, smelled” etc.—most words having to do with the senses.

This isn’t black and white advice; sometimes you’ll use these words and that’s okay. They’re not WRONG. They’re just weaker. And they’re weaker because they create distance between the reader and the experience of the character.*

If you want your reader to feel like they’re experiencing the story right alongside the character, you want to cut down on filter words.

*This is particularly important with first person and close third POVs. The reader always knows whose eyes they’re seeing through and thoughts they’re privy to. So you don’t need to tell them “I saw X.” Or “I heard X.” Or “I thought Y.” You can just jump into the action/observation as it’s happening.

This is also where you want to pay attention to verbs of being.

you want to pay attention

to verbs of being.

That means that when you read a line like

John saw that the curtains were open.

It immediately takes you OUT of the character's perspective and instead tells you what they experience as a secondhand observation.

You don't have to get fancy or purple with how you rephrase things like this. Not everything needs a ton of breathing room.

You wanna know what's perfectly impactful while keeping a tight POV?

The curtains were open.