More art than Time

So.

museumoftheslain.org

A few years back I thought it would be fun to have a made up museum logo for some of my weird little morbid books, as if they were all books in the gift shop of this fictional museum. This fun little joke to myself has now grown into a full on worldbuilding project, The Museum of the Slain.

The museum of the Slain is a museum filled with relics of worlds that have ended. The world is always ending around the museum, and it endures, untouched, collecting the pieces and cataloguing them.

The works bearing the Museum logo (recently reworked by the amazing

@spiremint ) have now grown to include scary clown catalogues, guides to turning yourself into an island, collections of rituals, and guides to exhibitions in the museum itself.

I wanted somewhere to collect all this, and to build the impression of the Museum itself, and it turns out they'll let anyone just buy a dot org url, so I have done that! There's already a guided tour that you can check out, and I have plans for much more!

The museum site also contains a guide for people who want to play in it themselves - if you want to make creative work within the museum, or to incorporate the museum to your own projects, I'd love that! And I made a guide to help you!

It's also worth saying that the other major Museum of the Slain stuff I'm making is over on my patreon, which funds daft endeavours like this! Patrons get access to MOTS stories I make from various solo TTRPGs - we're just about to start one based on my playthrough of Artefact by Jack Harrison!

Prize for reading all this: little bit of art from that upcoming story!

When Life Gives You Corpses is a brilliant YA about a cursed praying mantis who falls for a young witch. Yield Under Great Persuasion is a raunchy, but surprisingly sweet story of two men repairing their relationship. Fabulous Bodies is a horror story about a queer rockstar rising from the dead.

This is Where the Future Bleeds is a fantasy set in a vividly imagined land, where two women (who happen to kiss) are the key to healing the broken sky. You're No Better is a story about a teen struggling in the shadow of his murderous parent. Oil on Canvas is about a woman who finds disturbing paintings in the home of her dead mother.

from one, two

You are posted out by the Hollywood sign tonight, sitting under the frame where the W used to be. It got burnt to a crisp during last week’s big superhero fight. A hero died right where you’re sitting. The whole area’s been closed down until Hero Force can coordinate a recovery effort. Usually it’d be done by now but no one’s willing to touch it until the ash has been completely blown away.

It’s a rule that the world must stand still when a hero dies.

“How much?”

The voice comes from behind you. The lights that illuminate the Hollywood sign are down to hide as much of the scorch marks as possible. You wouldn’t be able to see anything even if you did turn around, so you don’t.

You put some chapstick on, the glide of the balm against your wind chapped lips grounding.

“I said,” the Hero says, voice tightening, “How. Much.”

There’s the sound of gravel crunching now. They’re wearing heavy boots and the scent of fresh blood grows stronger the closer they get. Their breathing is smooth and even which means it’s not their blood.

You put the cap back on your chapstick and tuck it into your leather jacket’s inner pocket. “I don’t take money.”

“Then what do you take?” The Hero rounds the Y and comes into your line of sight. The dark hides most of their features, but you can make out a glittering gold mask and the dull shine of drying blood on their chest plate. Their breathing may be even, but their stance isn’t. They sway in place, back and forth, back and forth. Their arms wrap around their stomach. “I’ve got land. A house. You can have it.”

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.

#hello again martin and bosco!! sending you boys round for another go :)

- stop nuking trans women’s blogs on mass, and reinstate the blogs that have been wrongfully nuked

- Get rid of the fucking nazis

- Get rid of the fucking bots

- Stop this weird fucking ‘mature content’ bullshit

- Stop the age verification bullshit

- Give us the option to block specific anon senders

- Put the fucking notes back to one number rather than showing everything separately

- Give us the option to turn off communities / option to stop seeing them

- Fix the fucking search functions

- GIVE US THE OPTION TO MAKE A GROUP CHATS WITH PEOPLE WHO ARE MUTUALS WITH YOU

- Fix the text posts on mobile so you can press return/add a line without deleting everything underneath that line

- Bring back the reblog lines so we can see who is replying to/reblogging from who

- Let us pin multiple posts

- stop making full page ads that open with even the slightest hint of a scroll

What tumblr staff actually did:

- None of that

- literally not a single one of those

Son: there’s always a librarian. Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t there. And it’s a garden, there has to be someone taking care of it or it isn’t really a garden.

Me:

Son: any librarian who hoards a library to themselves is hiding something.

Daughter: /nods seriously/

you can browse the collection here

sign up for a QLL card to check ebooks & audiobooks out

I was boggled by my enjoyment of this song not just as a statement but as music. Then I realized… it’s DARK country! I don’t like regular country, but dark or horror country? Heck yeah.