Language is a River

⚠️Spoiler alert⚠️

This is when MB and Farai first met (every time I read this scene, it feels like Farai is interrogating her spouse's affair partner🥹)

And i'm happy to see the two of them building trust in each other in the latest series.

+The cutest part

Your wife is a wonderful, caring planetary leader and scientist <3

She goes on what's meant to be a mundane planetary survey expedition

this turns into a corporate death trap she and her team just barely escape with their lives

after the death trap she gets kidnapped by the corporation that made the death trap due to them not wanting to pay damages

again. she and her team miraculously escape with their lives

after what easily had to be 6+ months she finally arrives home

Your wife is traumatized, unwilling to talk about or address this trauma, and now has a co-dependent relationship with a rogue SecUnit

You and the family are really trying not to hold the 'rogue SecUnit' thing against the Rogue SecUnit. Not its fault. But it is sarcastic and glares a lot and is non-social and has installed literal spydrones everywhere. It's willing to kill anyone who hurts your wife or her extended family. This is, to put it bluntly, a bit of an Adjustment for everyone.

Your wife decides to retire from being a planetary leader. One one hand, you think it's a good idea for her to take the time to focus on her mental health and be with her loved ones. On the other hand, it's concerning all of this has made her give up one of her passions.

One of your older children is going on her first off-planetary survey. This is good, obviously :) It's just. you are all still stressing from the trauma of your last family member's planetary survey.

It's fine. It's going to be fine. Your brother-in-law is going to be with her, and a bunch of your wife's long-standing colleagues, and-- you have complex feelings about this-- the SecUnit. it will be fine.

It is not fine.

The SecUnit and your brother-in-law and your daughter have all been kidnapped by a mysterious force for mysterious reasons.

Now your wife-- who is meant to be on indefinite mental health leave-- is off to save them.

You and your third partner want to go with her. You want to. But you have no skills for this, and family at home you need to care for. So you stay on the sidelines, waiting, waiting, waiting.

THEY'RE OKAY EVERYONE IS OKAY

thank fuck. phew. okay. now they're going to come home and--

what do you meant they're not coming home

what do you mean your child has decided to go to university off world at the school that kidnapped her

what do you mean your wife, instead of retiring, has decided to become some sort of anti-corporate activist

Yeah okay. This is not a conversation to have over the feed with a 2+ month time delay. You need to have an in-person conversation. You'll make a family trip of it; Nana and Sofia will come with. This is a good, normal, family visit

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.

Eight of Swords and Two of Wands

Finally continuing these!! Only missing Sokka now.