am fuckimg soup

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.

It's this piece, titled The Banality of the Banality of Evil. Because on first glance, you're like. Yeah, okay, it's obvious what it's saying. Even nazis, even evil people can appreciate beauty, too. But then you learn its name, and suddenly the interpretation shifts a bit. The idea that evil is banal has in itself become banal. my first response to seeing a nazi on a bench is "oh it's about the banality of evil" and not "jesus christ there's a nazi on the bench."

what I find really interesting is how the way this is drawn (especially considering who drew it) the art style seems extremely deliberate. This type of nostalgic landscape painting is very reminiscent of nazi art and specifically, Hitler's art.

Nazis were extremely judgmental of "entartete Kunst" (degenerate art). Bansky's usual work very well fall into this category! So for him to go for this style of painting in particular is another choice I find very interesting, because I can see some people react to this painting with some variation of "oh, I didn't know he could actually draw! I thought he is a hack but he is a real artist!" - and that is where they would agree with the Nazis.

From bottom of my heart

we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)

please rb for larger sample size!

Question 1/3

Thank you for helping with this data collection. Please rb for as big a sample as possible!

I'm an artist and medical student, and I use art to help me pay some bills.

I built a free, helpful tool because to help prevent other talented creatives from undercharging, as I really see this a lot online.

It's a calculator with a built in reality check

Input your survival costs and expenses

True billable hours

Get the rate you actually need to charge to hit a 20% (or whatever you choose) profit margin.

It generates the rate, a template negotiation email + final invoice.

Plan to keep this tool free, ad-free, and open to everyone.

🔗 Check your math: fairpaycalc.artres.xyz

If the "Thriving Rate" calculation empowers you to double your quote on your next job, please consider hitting the "Buy me a coffee"button. It keeps the server running and the code flowing <3

it's not fair that twitter's phm tag has a rocky emoji so i stole him for you all